[linux-audio-user] Common linux audio layer

[Christoph Eckert]

Hi,


while doing the videos, I wondered about one thing.

Linux is a multitasking and a multiuser machine.

But: there's no audio layer on the operating system level.

While different users can burn CDs and share the CPU, there's 
no possibility included that multiple applications can play 
sound - if the applications are started by different users, 
the situation is getting worse.

Isn't it a really ugly design that one aplication can grab the 
audio device using ALSA or OSS and block it for any other 
application?

So, there have been different solutions for this, esound for 
Gnome, artsd for KDE. But still, there's no reasonable 
default system that can be used by *all* applications, so 
application developers can use *one* API instead of having to 
implement multiple completely different interfaces (ALSA, 
OSS, arts, esound, jack, portaudio...)?

So my question is: Is there work in progress somewhere out 
there which will solve this by implementing a common unix 
audio layer? Or, will be jack be the layer that will soon be 
included into the boot process by all distributors?

Well, I guess JACK is a special soundserver for a special 
task, and I guess it lacks some other multimedia features.

So, is there any common acknowledgement concerning unix audio 
(you see I avoid linux but using unix instead ;-)?

Any thouht are very welcome.


 Best regards


    ce