During the 2.5 development cycle, ALSA, the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture was merged into the Linux kernel. At that time, support for OSS, the Open Sound System was marked as deprecated. A recent thread on the lkml discussed the future of OSS, questioning if it is worth fixing issues with now deprecated OSS drivers.

On one side of the debate, some feel that it doesn't make sense to throw away a functional subsystem with willing maintainers, especially when there are some soundcards that are currently only supported by OSS. On the other side, some feel it doesn't make sense to support two code bases that accomplish the same thing, suggesting all effort currently invested in fixing OSS drivers should be refocused to writing and fixing ALSA drivers. Some of the advantages that ALSA has over OSS are listed here.

Those still using OSS will be happy to know that the Open Sound System will all but certainly always be part of the 2.6 stable kernel. As for the future, it is quite likely that OSS will be removed during the 2.7 development phase, and that ALSA will be the one remaining sound subsystem. Much of the thread follows, offering interesting arguments for both side of this debate.

From: Jos Hulzink [email blocked]
To: Kernel Mailing List [email blocked]
Subject: OSS: cleanup or throw away
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 19:55:52 +0100

Hi,

While fixing some "deprecated" issues in the OSS drivers, I wondered whether 
this makes sense, as entire OSS is marked deprecated. Will OSS make it until 
2.7, or will it be dropped soon ? (In other words, should I take care of the 
OSS drivers or not bother about them)

Best regards,

Jos Hulzink



From: Muli Ben-Yehuda [email blocked]
Subject: Re: OSS: cleanup or throw away
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 22:22:21 +0200

On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 07:55:52PM +0100, Jos Hulzink wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> While fixing some "deprecated" issues in the OSS drivers, I wondered whether 
> this makes sense, as entire OSS is marked deprecated. Will OSS make it until 
> 2.7, or will it be dropped soon ? (In other words, should I take care of the 
> OSS drivers or not bother about them)

In my not so humble opinion, throwing OSS away will be a big mistake,
as long as there are people willing to maintain it. Keep it there and
let the users (or distributions) choose what to use. I've seen
multiple bug reports of cards that work with OSS and don't work with
ALSA (and vice versa), so keeping both seems the proper thing to
do. Personally, I maintain one OSS driver, and fix bugs in others
occasionally. 

Cheers, 
Muli 
-- 
Muli Ben-Yehuda
http://www.mulix.org | http://mulix.livejournal.com/

From: Adrian Bunk [email blocked]
Subject: Re: OSS: cleanup or throw away
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 22:59:21 +0100

On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 10:22:21PM +0200, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:
>...
> I've seen
> multiple bug reports of cards that work with OSS and don't work with
> ALSA (and vice versa), so keeping both seems the proper thing to
>...

Wouldn't it be better to get the ALSA drivers working in such cases?

It's really not a good idea to have two codebases for the same purpose.

> Cheers, 
> Muli 

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed



From: Muli Ben-Yehuda [email blocked]
Subject: Re: OSS: cleanup or throw away
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 00:03:27 +0200

On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 10:59:21PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 10:22:21PM +0200, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:
> >...
> > I've seen
> > multiple bug reports of cards that work with OSS and don't work with
> > ALSA (and vice versa), so keeping both seems the proper thing to
> >...
> 
> Wouldn't it be better to get the ALSA drivers working in such cases?

It would; but until they do, ditching OSS is a regression. 

> It's really not a good idea to have two codebases for the same
> purpose.

It is if neither one is witholding effort from the other, and neither
one does a perfect job for all cases. 

Cheers, 
Muli 
-- 
Muli Ben-Yehuda
http://www.mulix.org | http://mulix.livejournal.com/



From: Adrian Bunk [email blocked]

Subject: Re: OSS: cleanup or throw away
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 23:23:29 +0100

On Tue, Mar 23, 2004 at 12:03:27AM +0200, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 10:59:21PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 10:22:21PM +0200, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:
> > >...
> > > I've seen
> > > multiple bug reports of cards that work with OSS and don't work with
> > > ALSA (and vice versa), so keeping both seems the proper thing to
> > >...
> > 
> > Wouldn't it be better to get the ALSA drivers working in such cases?

> 
> It would; but until they do, ditching OSS is a regression. 
>...

Clearly.

Ditching OSS at the beginning of 2.7 will give several years to identify 
and fix such regressions.

> Cheers, 
> Muli 

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed



From: Russell King [email blocked]
Subject: Re: OSS: cleanup or throw away
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 23:17:18 +0000

On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 11:23:29PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 23, 2004 at 12:03:27AM +0200, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 10:59:21PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > > Wouldn't it be better to get the ALSA drivers working in such cases?
> > 
> > It would; but until they do, ditching OSS is a regression. 
> >...
> 
> Clearly.
> 
> Ditching OSS at the beginning of 2.7 will give several years to identify 
> and fix such regressions.

Seriously, ALSA has some issues at the moment which OSS doesn't have.
The main one is that OSS does not require mmap() access, whereas ALSA
native does at present - and there are architectures where the ALSA
method of mmap() both the ring buffer and the control data does not
work.

These issues aren't simple to resolve - as can be seen from the
recent lkml threads on the subject.  I've been seriously considering
submitting the existing OSS drivers I have here for ARM hardware
instead of trying to convert them to ALSA drivers first, and
considering whether I should be writing new OSS drivers in
preference to ALSA drivers.

That's not to say I don't want to see ALSA progress though - which is
why I'm working to try to get these issues resolved.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:  2.6 PCMCIA      - http://pcmcia.arm.linux.org.uk/
                 2.6 Serial core

From: Gábor Lénárt  [email blocked]
Subject: Re: OSS: cleanup or throw away
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 09:23:38 +0100

On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 10:22:21PM +0200, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:
> In my not so humble opinion, throwing OSS away will be a big mistake,
> as long as there are people willing to maintain it. Keep it there and
> let the users (or distributions) choose what to use. I've seen

Or better: since both of OSS and ALSA are sound systems, let OSS maintainers
start hacking ALSA, so missing parts in ALSA which presents in OSS can be
implemented. Having one sound system would be better, especially in the
official kernel tree. It's another story, if you have multiple one outside
the "official" kernel source. imho.

> multiple bug reports of cards that work with OSS and don't work with
> ALSA (and vice versa), so keeping both seems the proper thing to
> do. Personally, I maintain one OSS driver, and fix bugs in others
> occasionally. 

- Gábor (larta'H)



From: Jos Hulzink [email blocked]
Subject: Re: OSS: cleanup or throw away
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 11:35:40 +0100 (CET)

On Tue, 23 Mar 2004, [iso-8859-2] Gábor Lénárt wrote:

> Or better: since both of OSS and ALSA are sound systems, let OSS maintainers
> start hacking ALSA, so missing parts in ALSA which presents in OSS can be
> implemented. Having one sound system would be better, especially in the
> official kernel tree. It's another story, if you have multiple one outside
> the "official" kernel source. imho.

Maybe we should start ditching OSS drivers of cards that are known to work
"reasonably well" in ALSA. If someone starts screaming "I need OSS for the
ALSA driver contains a bug", that bug might even be located and dealt with
much sooner. The ALSA OSS emulation is good enough for user land
applications to survive I think, so it's just a matter of driver bugs.

This way we end with a list of OSS drivers that are not ported yet or that
never will be ported.

OTOH, I don't know how the big bosses here think about ditching OSS
from a stable kernel tree... Can imagine they think it is not done.

Jos

From: Adrian Bunk [email blocked]
Subject: Re: OSS: cleanup or throw away
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 22:57:09 +0100

On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 07:55:52PM +0100, Jos Hulzink wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> While fixing some "deprecated" issues in the OSS drivers, I wondered whether 
> this makes sense, as entire OSS is marked deprecated. Will OSS make it until 
> 2.7, or will it be dropped soon ? (In other words, should I take care of the 
> OSS drivers or not bother about them)

OSS will stay in 2.6 (2.6 is a stable kernel series) but it will most
likely be removed in 2.7.

I wouldn't spend time to fix deprecated warnings in OSS code, such 
cleanups are wasted time for code that will most likely be removed in 
2.7.

> Best regards,
> 
> Jos Hulzink

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.

                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed



From: Diego Calleja García [email blocked]
Subject: Re: OSS: cleanup or throw away
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 23:27:23 +0100

El Mon, 22 Mar 2004 22:57:09 +0100 Adrian Bunk [email blocked] escribió:

> OSS will stay in 2.6 (2.6 is a stable kernel series) but it will most
> likely be removed in 2.7.

Personally, as an user, I'd like to have the OSS drivers which don't have
a ALSA equivalent for my old hardware. There're several
sound cards with both ALSA and OSS drivers where ALSA works
much better 99% of the time. Those could be safely removed
(even in the 2.6 timeframe, I'd argue) but I'd like to keep the ones
without an alsa equivalent for my old hardware (specially now that we
have a -tiny tree ;) however I can understand that if they don't
have a maintainer they'll get removed...

• Archive of above thread
• KernelTrap interview with Russell King