ALSA [Was: Paris summit]

[Jeff Waugh]

<quote who="Lee Revell">

> I'm sorry, I just don't buy it.  The entire open source world uses ALSA
> - why can't the proprietary guys use it too?

For the reasons I stated in earlier emails. I don't want to waste everyone's
time repeating myself, so please just go back and read them.

> Why haven't I seen any of these guys propose an alternative on the ALSA
> lists?  They just wrote it off af first sight?

No, I've spoken to a number of ISVs who've looked at ALSA, in some cases
even ported to it, but are not interested in supporting their application
while using it. Again, see previous emails for why.

> > There are a lot of great reasons to use a good software mixing daemon
> > instead of ALSA's dmix mess.
> 
> How is it a mess?  What's wrong with it?  What reasons?

So, dmix will improve, but right now it has plenty of stability and hardware
support issues. But those are on top of serious design problems that many
regard as inappropriate.  It mashes too many magical tricks into a library
(and interface) that is not designed for this purpose - compare and contrast
with the very explicit and direct approach of using a sound daemon such as
Pulse. dmix is also stuck behind the ALSA API. ;-)

> You still haven't explained exactly what's wrong with ALSA on a technical
> level.  All I've seen so far is "I don't like it".

No, you misread - what you've seen me say so far is "here is why many ISVs
don't adopt it".

I'm not sure there is any point continuing this thread - you think ISVs are
lazy and stupid for not using a library interface that they have clear and
understandable reasons to shy away from. I don't think a lengthy thread on
sounder is going to change your opinion, and I'm not sure your point of view
is more convincing than the opinion of ISVs that I speak to... and this is
all just arguing, not solving. :-)

- Jeff

-- 
linux.conf.au 2007: Sydney, Australia           http://lca2007.linux.org.au/
 
                           Wars end, love lasts.