The same situation as today, that is.
ALSA mixes by default since something like 1.0.10 (november 2005).
Which started at a time there was no ALSA, has been basically dead for 6
years now and has at the moment finally been dropped by its last user.
The "linux audio jungle" picture you posted a link to:
http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/linuxaudio.png
shows more arrows pointing to OSS than it does to ALSA and with a number of
those coming from things that existed before there even was an ALSA and yet
somehow you maintain this userspace audio jungle is ALSA's fault?
The Linux userspace audio situation is improving; since software mixing,
plain vanilla ALSA is a good, single solution to a majority of uses and
something like Phonon which is going to arrive later this year seems poised
to provide a nice high level API, including for people who believe that
audio is about playing you-got-mail jingles.
The reason we're not there yet is in part _due_ to people maintaining that
OSS is somehow a valid choice on Linux. Ie:
/dev/mixer is an OSS device. Recent versions of skype should (as far as I've
been told) be able to use native ALSA but if you're using an older version
you get what you asked for. Should the ALSA OSS emulation try its damndest
to support proprietary, bugridden closed source junk such as skype? Opinions
probably vary but I'd say yes. Let's not make it, old versions of it at
that, into the reference application though.
Video is a much more significant problem for desktop Linux than audio is and
solutions are going to arrive combined as they are both userspace (ie, not
kernel, not DRI, not ALSA, not OSS) multimedia problems. I have high hopes
especially for the new technologies that went into KDE4. Haven't payed much
attention to GNOME though so not sure what they're upto. Non-stellar
cooperation between those two large desktop initiatives in the field of
multimedia is another reason for things not being there yet. Go bark up
those trees instead.
Rene.
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