<div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 6:01 PM, vitamin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:wineforum-user@winehq.org">wineforum-user@winehq.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
The question here is - why would Wine need to add an additional layer to it's sound subsystem, when it has already properly functioning lower level drivers? Not one, but 2! Which would never go away (OSS is a standard used on lots of other *NIXes and ALSA is _the_ sound driver system in Linux). BTW look at other sound servers that pulseaudio replaces - ESD and ARTS. And where are they now? Wine had more-less working drivers for those (arts driver was removed, esd hasn't been touched for ages).<br>
</blockquote><div>�<br>I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse about this but magic and holes aside, it does something that Wine should strive for; it just works. I'm certain it's currently neither elegant or efficient but it works.<br>
<br>OSD and ALSA will, as you say, probably be around forever in some form. They are tried and tested hardware abstraction layers that have served Linux well, but they're not the whole picture anymore. ESD (and ARTS to a lesser extent) have tried to bridge their shortfalls and now it's pulseaudio's turn. That's what desktop linux distributions have decided, that's what they're developing and as a result, that's what 90-something percent of desktop Linux users are going to use too.<br>
<br>Ubuntu 9.10 is so tightly integrated with it, getting rid of PA is going to be more trouble than it's worth and I'd be shocked if the same isn't mirrored in other desktops. They want to show some level of unity so app developers have something to focus on instead trying to chase after the moving target that Linux audio has been for the past decade.<br>
<br>And yes, you're probably right. PA will probably go the way of ESD and ARTS, getting replaced by something largely incompatible that the desktop Linux gods decree upon us... But I don't see why "Oh because it'll change in half a decade's time" is a valid argument. Say you do wait until PA's replacement, what happens then? No new wine driver because PA+1 will be replaced in another five-or-so years? This is technology. Things get replaced. Things move on.<br>
<br>I thought most of Wine's development was about making things work. You hack around the millions of Windows quirks, hack around the billions of quirks people use to code their apps for Windows, yet you won't hack around a Linux desktop quirk? I just don't get it.<br>
<br>And for the record, I'd be more than happy to use ALSA on top of PA (or directly if it didn't need me to pasuspend) but it doesn't "just work". If it did work reliably, I doubt there would be this much talk of direct PA integration.<br>
</div></div>