13 Jun
2005
13 Jun
'05
2:11 p.m.
it "just worked" for him on OS X
because Apple pick the audio interface.
yup, and they set the API standard, and they govern the distribution, and ..
this doesn't work on Linux. you can't herd sheep^H^H^H^H^Hpenguins
with a flamethrower.
several people provided
reference SuSE supported h/w configs for example - had he been using one
of them, it would have "just worked". what jwz wants is what everybody
else wants, and its an entirely reasonable thing to aim for - all
supported audio devices are just plug-n-play. it doesn't work that way
on OS X, it doesn't work that way on Windows, and being a stupid
petulant geek who continues to try to trade his involvement in lucid
emacs, netscape and mozilla as excuses for his bad temper doesn't get
Linux any closer to the goal.
hmm .. not sure i agree that jwz is 'trading ones app-hubris for
brownies', i mean, maybe it'd be different if he'd written a
multi-track audio editor and -then- jumped to the same OSX-lovin'
conclusion ..
thing is though: he does have a point. why is this stuff still so
hard, after so many years? its -not- the drivers, imho, its the
moving-target nature of ALSA and all the competing audio API's,
underneath a pile of semi-working apps ..
ALSA's biggest problem was that people like me
shaped its design too
much. I was trying to ensure that ALSA was useful for pro-audio setups,
and I had little interest in the desktop story. There were no
(sufficiently) vigorous advocates for that world as ALSA developed, and
we are seeing the cost of that now.
in all fairness, if there were a hardware vendor willing to follow
the 'known working' path to ALSA glory, we wouldn't be having this
discussion .. or, at least, if we knew of such a vendor (i'm sure
they're out there, those quiet linux VAR's who pack it all up and
send it off, operational-like).
i mean .. i've been using linux since the minix-list post, and i'll
be damned if i can keep up with all this
ALSA/esd/OSS/jackd/artsserver voodoo that is expected of anyone
wanting to get audio working in linux, at the same/similar degree of
operational status as we see under OSX .. even though, i'm very, very
eager to see linux function as a working audio platform. there's
gotta be -some- way to get it all working, and i dont just mean "buy
a Dell laptop" ..
--
;
Jay Vaughan