[linux-audio-user] Great news for JACK & KDE

[John Bleichert]

On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Daniel James wrote:
<snip>
> > Well, KDE is suppoed to cover more than just linux
>
> In theory, yes, but has anyone seen KDE running on Solaris or anything
> like that? All the non-Linux platforms running free software desktops
> that I've seen have had GNOME - BSDs users, for example. Sun even
> built SUSE with a GNOME interface for its (cough...) 'Java Desktop'.
>

I was trying to stay out of this thread, but... GNOME is prevalent on
Solaris because 1) building something like GNOME or KDE on Solaris is
non-trivial and you want the vendor (Sun) to do it for you. I have no idea
why many vendors have chosen GNOME. At least here at work and among the
geeks I know outside, KDE usage (on linux or BSD, whatever) is much higher
than GNOME usage, by a wide margin. YMMV. artsd does have some uses (see
below) and you can disable it if you want.

> I guess artsd could be retained for legacy use, but with ALSA 1.0 just
> around the corner, what's any Linux distributions excuse for not
> making it the default? And we know that artsd won't be much use until
> the non-KDE applications support it, which isn't very likely.
>

Artsd works well for things like emulating full-duplex on crap-arse
onboard sound rigs like this 810 rig I'm sitting at. Sure. it doesn't rock
on the big iron hardware but for a general consumer sound rig it works
fine. I've been running arts on top of ALSA for 2 years now w/o a failure
or glitch. There's no reason for non-KDE apps to support artsd, as far as
I can see so long as they can get to the OSS-emulation layer or better yet
are ALSA native.

Also, as I understand it, ALSA is standard (in linux) starting with 2.6.0,
right?

// John Bleichert
// syborg at earthlink.net