Talk:OSS Compatible Applications

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

We don't have the testing base to check even the common distros alone, so a detailed list like you suggested is difficult. I doubt we'd have such a base in the future given current wiki growth rate either. If a disclaimer is added that this is not anywhere near a full list, and that most apps work fine but may not work on a particular distro, then this fixes #1 and #2 for me. (Renaming the page to something which doesn't imply all OSS compatible apps are listed here would also help). (For some reason, I have a writing block right now, and can't think of an appropriate disclaimer)..

P.S. What does setmixer do? I couldn't find a page describing it anywhere. If I'm guessing correctly, it's a mixer program. It probably use OSSv3 API, which may actually make not that appropriate for this page - it could ignore some settings exported by the OSSv4 mixer. Cesium 10:38, 20 April 2008 (CEST)