Microsofts new way of bashing Linux

[Alexander Jacob Tsykin]

On Friday 16 June 2006 12:56, Michael T. Richter wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-15-06 at 22:40 -0400, Lee Revell wrote:
> > > How exactly has software development with the GPL made sound support
> > > leap forward again?
> >
> > For pro audio applications Linux is far superior to Windows and at least
> > as good as Mac OSX.  It's true that normal desktop stuff is still
> > somewhat problematic.
>
> I doubt it, frankly.  For a pro audio application to work, it would
> actually have to work with the sound cards, you see.
>
> > It took a while to get to this point, but much of the reason is poor
> > driver support due to lack of cooperation from hardware vendors.
>
> The problems I'm still having with audio are centred on two
> "well-supported" pieces of hardware.  In that the drivers are part of
> the system and don't appear to be third-party binaries clashing with the
> ever-changing Linux ABI.
>
> > The open source development model does often lead to slower progress
> > than the proprietary model, but no one ever claimed that freedom was not
> > free.
>
> The specific claim made that I responded to was: "I think people are
> shortly going to notice that they are paying proprietary software
> companies to hold back the develpment of the software."
>
> Now you're saying that open source holds back software development.
> Could you and Andrew please get on the same page of the script?  ;-)
>
> > What exactly can you do with audio on Windows that you can't on Linux?
>
> I can play an AC3-encoded movie file on a system with only stereo
> capabilities using any audio/video application because the sound system
> downmixes automagically behind the scene.  Under Linux I have to hunt
> around my various playback applications from movie to movie because some
> files will play under Totem, some under Xine, some under VLC, etc.
> because downmixing is the domain of the application, not the "Advanced"
> sound architecture's.
>
> Oh, and in Windows I can plug in my external sound card, set it as the
> default and have 100% of audio go out to it.  In Linux some apps will
> reliably ignore the external sound card and play only into my laptop's
> built-in, some will go reliably out the external and ignore the
> laptop's, some will switch randomly between them and still others will
> just get so hopelessly confused they throw their hands up in disgust and
> dump core.  (To the point that I just gave up on ever using the external
> audio card.)
>
I repeat, why then are you using Linux? Please don't interpret this as a 
suggestion that you shouldn't, rather that you look for the tool most 
appropriate for you.

Sasha