On Sun, 15 Aug 2010 13:43:51 +0930 Karl Goetz <k...@kgoetz.id.au> wrote:
> > How much work will it be for us? It sounds like a non trivial change. > To be honest, it all depends on whether applications like Firefox and family want to play nice with OSS. Best case scenario, the kernel modules are easily merged into the Linux-libre sources, we find a user-friendly sound widget that suppots OSS, and all application software just works with little to no modifications. Worst case scenario, the kernel modules don't fit into the kernel sources easily and need to be built as a separate package, we need to create a brand new mixer from scratch, and Firefox simply refuses to work without major changes (in this case, I think it's definitely an idea to drop). > > * It is not included in the Linux source. At present, using it > > requires building it as a kernel module separately. > > bit disadvantage, especially if its not going to be shipped by debian > with squeeze. > Debian ships the kernel modules in source code form, to be built by DKMS. I haven't yet got DKMS to actually build them successfully on my machine, and in any case this would be inconvenient if it were the default. I started to merge the OSSv4 drivers into Linux-libre in place of the deprecated OSSv3 today, and so far at least this part looks promising; I've written the relevant kernel configuration file and Makefile, and I expect to get it to build successfully within a week at most. > > * The binary distribution of OSSv4 includes some non-free drivers. > > While these are not present in the GPL'd source distribution, use of > > OSS may be misconstrued by users as supporting a project which > > distributes non-free software. > > This doesn't stop us with other projects - linux being the obvious > example. > I know, but it's still something to consider. > > * I do not know of any user-friendly mixer widget that supports OSS. > > The OSSv4 source distribution itself comes with a program called > > ossxmix, which is exceptionally ugly and features unintuitive > > controls. > > Big negative. > Once I've finished merging the OSSv4 modules into the kernel, I'll look into this issue. With any luck, one already exists, but if not I'll look to either modify ossxmix to make it more user friendly, or modify a user friendly ALSA widget to make it support OSS. After that point, the only thing standing in our way would be any application software that doesn't work with OSS. > > Given these advantages and disadvantages, I propose the following > > solution to including OSSv4 as the default sound backend in gNewSense > > 3.0 "parkes" (with ALSA available at the user's option, of course), > > which I am willing to hack on with the development community's > > go-ahead: > > At this stage you don't have my support - this sounds like a lot of > extra work to carry, for no direct benefit. > kk > I'll post again to the list when I have finished merging OSSv4 drivers into Linux-libre and creating an OSSv4 mixer widget. At the very least, these would be useful things to submit upstream (although I don't know if Linus is interested in OSSv4). At such point, I will provide an assessment of how well application software interacts with OSSv4. Regards, Steven McDonald
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