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> The specific issue with OSS was that it was never part of Linux Huh?

• asveikau 2y ago
  Iirc there was a version in the kernel tree, then "upstream" if you could even call it that developed it further (OSS 4.0). I think there was a company behind it and a nonfree license. Obviously that was a no-go for inclusion into mainline Linux. But alsa was/is also enormously complicated with a huge library, user mode plugins and whatnot. It reminds me of a common problem that people have where they think API and implementation are one and the same, and that you cannot swap out a different implementation keeping the simple API. People would say you need alsa because it does software mixing, but the lack of software mixing wasn't an OSS API problem, it was a problem with how it was implemented.
  • p_l 2y ago
    ALSA started replacing OSS on linux before software mixing became as critical as it ended up, because people still often had proper sound cards with multiple channel hw mixers. The assumption that you could punt software mixing to hardware or deal with limitation of only one program accessing the audio at a time took a hard hit when Intel HDA pretty much decimated presence of such hardware on PCs (AC'97 was much less pervasive for various reasons)
• progmetaldev 2y ago
  Open Sound System (OSS), rather than Open Source Software, if I'm reading you right. I only recall because I've been toying with sound software for decades, trying to get various synths and music composition applications working. Apologies if that didn't address your confusion.