Talk:OSS Compatible Applications

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Revision as of 07:49, 20 April 2008 by Markhobley (Talk | contribs) (Throwing a pie in the sky)

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I seem to be deleting your contribution on a regular basis :-(, so I won't do that here. But I really don't like the way this page currently stands.

There are two main problems here:

  1. It underestimates the number of apps which work with OSS, which creates a bad impression.
    OSS has been in existence for many years, and the OSS API is used by FreeBSD's soundsystem (and soon Solaris as well). We could take almost every sound category app from freshmeat and put it here, except for the MIDI-using ones. Not to mention all SDL/libao/Portaudio/etc. based applications and games.
  2. It isn't entirely reproducible.
    Linux distros patch their apps, and in some cases it prevents the app from working with OSS on default configuration, so you'll have some apps which work easily in one distro, and not at the other. User then may find this page, and get all confused.

My suggestion to rescue this page is to make it show instead how sound needs can be satified using apps which support OSS. Something like http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=149258&#149258 (The wiki is however a OS-agnostic area unlike OpenSolaris forum). In soundbyte form: use-centric rather than app-centric. What do you think? Cesium 16:06, 19 April 2008 (CEST)

We could just list applications that are known to work, and maybe attach distribution specific notes against those that are problematic), for example: 

* foobar (requires recompile on Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, Slackware)
* barbar (works fine on most common distributions)
* barfoo (requires OSS patch, and recompile)

We could also put explanatory notes on the page, stating the situation. This is a wiki, so evolution will take place, and maybe a panacea will appear (or maybe not).

We could also create two pages:

OSS Compatible applications for BSD OSS Compatible applications for Linux

(I guess most of the BSD stuff works, but some Linux stuff uses Alsa). Users would be able to look at both lists.

If we can get the updated sound core back into the kernel tarball, maybe this will give wider adoption, and distros may support the updated core.

- Mark Hobley

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