[linux-audio-user] Common linux audio layer

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