Re: sndio in linux with ossv4 instead of alsa

On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 10:35:23PM +0000, Damian Ariel Perticone wrote:
> Hi i want to know if sndio can work with ossv4 http://opensound.com/ instead of
> alsa, i use Gentoo linux and i want to make a ebuild of sndio and ossv4, and i
> really would like to use sndio instead of pulseaudio and it would be great if i
> can get sound in firefox with ossv4 + sndio.
> 
> 4Front Technologies - Open Sound System
> Open Sound System is an Open Systems/UNIX audio and MIDI architecture which
> supports off-the-shelf audio hardware.
> opensound.com
> 

Hi,

There's an OSS backend that works on FreeBSD, I don't know if it works
on Linux. I don't think it uses FreeBSD-specific interfaces.

The OSS API has design limitations; for instance programs can obtain a
common block size only if the play and record channel numbers are the
same. Basically this prevents using anything but stereo in
full-duplex. I'd suggest using ALSA instead.

AFAIU, on Linux OSS is emulated on top of ALSA. If this is correct, by
using ALSA you'd avoid this extra software layer, which means less
bloat and less bugs.

Out of curiossity, why do you try to avoid ALSA?

-- Alexandre