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Are you daft? Even the supported devices list from 2009 proves you wrong: http://manuals.opensound.com/devlists/Linux.html. In case you haven't been paying attention and are just trolling.

Prior to the advent of pulse audio on my distros of choice, I had audio issues from time to time. Usually small stuff like audio randomly stopping working or not being able to play certain applications simultaneously.

[Old Man mode]: I remember a time before PulseAudio, and before JACK, and before ALSA: The Linux kernel had some built-in drivers ("OSS-Free"?) which supported adequate functionality for every sound card/chip on the list, and if you wanted more features or support you could just pay 4front for a better driver (and they were always worth the minimal price).

And: Everything. Just. Worked. Always. Hardware settings (back when sound cards still had configurable analog sections(!)) were deterministic and reliable, and getting excellent sound from *random_app* was a foregone conclusion.

Much fun was had, for instance, with "cat /dev/audio > /dev/st0" to dump a radio show (reliably! without problems! in the plain-and-simple way that Unix is supposed to be!) to DDS tape.

Now, this was 17 (or so) years ago. Anything involving further difficulty, at any stage of the game on a user level, on the Linux sound front is a step backward.

Now, get the fuck off my lawn.

[/Old Man mode]

I think his experience predates both ALSA and KDE.

Way-back-then, the kernel's own OSS drivers generally just worked unless if you had something particularly strange or wanted to do unusual things with it, in which case 4front would be pleased to sell you inexpensive drivers (with human support).

My own experience was similar: Windows 95, for whatever reason, had a terrible time playing music -- FFS, it'd slow to a crawl just by copying a floppy disk. OS/2 did OK in that it at least multitasked properly, but had other limitations that I didn't like. Linux just worked: It played music reliably and predictably.

(Incidentally, I now use 7 on my desktop for exactly the same reasons.)

Try OSS v4

A more complete quote from your link:

Q: Is everything in OSS open sourced?

A: No. There are three drivers that have mosty been written by the hardware manufacturers. We are not permitted to release their sources unless their authors as us to do so.

Also some parts of the envy24 and envy24ht drivers contain some code written under NDA. We have not yet received the approval to open source the code from all manufacturers. So these drivers cannot be open sourced just now. If we don't get the approval in reasonable time we will distribute these drivers with the offending code stripped from the sources.

Finally there are some effects in the old softoss driver that are not included in the source packages. We will make the decision about their future later. At this moment it looks like we will remove the softoss driver from the OSS package so these effects will not be used in OSS anyway.

We reserve the right to include some "closed source" drivers only in our binary distribution if the hardware manufacturers refuse to give the programming specs without NDA. Our policy is to promote open source but not to enforce it. We will let hardware manufacturers to decide if they like to select the commercial distribution mode instead of the open source one with much wider customer base.

http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2411
OSS now released under BSD license

Postby dev Fri Jan 04, 2008 8:36 am
We are releasing the FreeBSD version of Open Sound under a BSD license and we hope that the BSD community steps up with ports for NetBSD and OpenBSD and enhancement to FreeBSD ports.

http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2139
Open Sound System is now open sourced!

Postby dev Thu Jun 14, 2007 4:16 am
We're releasing the source code for Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD/Unixware under CDDL/GPL licenses - get the source at http://developer.opensound.com/

We thank our paying customers for keeping us in business all these years - and we now hope that no one has a reason to not use OSS because it isn't open sourced.

Best regards
Dev Mazumdar

http://www.opensound.com/wiki/index.php/Building_OSSv4_from_source

Contents
[hide]

* 1 Building the OSS sound system from source
o 1.1 Requirements to build the source code
o 1.2 Building the source
+ 1.2.1 Obtain the OSS source
+ 1.2.2 Change to the source directory
+ 1.2.3 Extract the source tarball
+ 1.2.4 Create a build directory, and make it current
+ 1.2.5 Run the configure script
# 1.2.5.1 Notable configure switches
+ 1.2.6 Run make build
+ 1.2.7 Packing Open Sound System (

A more complete quote from your link:

Q: Is everything in OSS open sourced?

A: No. There are three drivers that have mosty been written by the hardware manufacturers. We are not permitted to release their sources unless their authors as us to do so.

Also some parts of the envy24 and envy24ht drivers contain some code written under NDA. We have not yet received the approval to open source the code from all manufacturers. So these drivers cannot be open sourced just now. If we don't get the approval in reasonable time we will distribute these drivers with the offending code stripped from the sources.

Finally there are some effects in the old softoss driver that are not included in the source packages. We will make the decision about their future later. At this moment it looks like we will remove the softoss driver from the OSS package so these effects will not be used in OSS anyway.

We reserve the right to include some "closed source" drivers only in our binary distribution if the hardware manufacturers refuse to give the programming specs without NDA. Our policy is to promote open source but not to enforce it. We will let hardware manufacturers to decide if they like to select the commercial distribution mode instead of the open source one with much wider customer base.

http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2411
OSS now released under BSD license

Postby dev Fri Jan 04, 2008 8:36 am
We are releasing the FreeBSD version of Open Sound under a BSD license and we hope that the BSD community steps up with ports for NetBSD and OpenBSD and enhancement to FreeBSD ports.

http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2139
Open Sound System is now open sourced!

Postby dev Thu Jun 14, 2007 4:16 am
We're releasing the source code for Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD/Unixware under CDDL/GPL licenses - get the source at http://developer.opensound.com/

We thank our paying customers for keeping us in business all these years - and we now hope that no one has a reason to not use OSS because it isn't open sourced.

Best regards
Dev Mazumdar

http://www.opensound.com/wiki/index.php/Building_OSSv4_from_source

Contents
[hide]

* 1 Building the OSS sound system from source
o 1.1 Requirements to build the source code
o 1.2 Building the source
+ 1.2.1 Obtain the OSS source
+ 1.2.2 Change to the source directory
+ 1.2.3 Extract the source tarball
+ 1.2.4 Create a build directory, and make it current
+ 1.2.5 Run the configure script
# 1.2.5.1 Notable configure switches
+ 1.2.6 Run make build
+ 1.2.7 Packing Open Sound System (

For a start, it's not open source:

http://developer.opensound.com/opensource_oss/licensing.html: "Q: Is everything in OSS open sourced? A: No. There are three drivers that have mosty been written by the hardware manufacturers. We are not permitted to release their sources unless their authors as us to do so..."

For a second, it has absolutely no chance of being merged into the kernel as written, hence little chance of being adopted by any major distribution.

So, what you're saying is, OSS4 doesn't work? I sure hope you don't tell my computers that - they seem to think that it DOES WORK.

Seriously - try it, you'll like it.

Oh - bluetooth? Don't own it, can't see the point in it. USB seems to do everything that bluetooth claims to do.

http://www.opensound.com/ [opensound.com]
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenSound [ubuntu.com]

You should be using OSS4. I put up with the Pulse idiosyncracies until my virtual machines spazzed out. Started researching my options, and found that Open Sound was moving past the deprecated OSS3, which wasn't much better than Pulse.

Since I've compiled and installed Open Sound, I have no more sound problems, period. Everything works the way it's supposed to.

If Pulse and Alsa get their shit together, fine. If not, I'm a devoted OSS fan. Before anyone runs off to experiment, be warned - you will probably have to spend a few minutes purging Alsa from your system. There is no co-existence of the two, at least not on Ubuntu. If you're not a Linux guru, plan on following a how-to, and plan on spending a couple hours getting it right.

http://www.opensound.com/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenSound

From the wiki http://www.opensound.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page:

Supported audio formats
- Supports 8/16/24/32 bits/sample audio formats
- Supports sampling rates from 8KHz up to 200KHz
- Supports mono, stereo, quad, 5.1, 7.1 and multichannel audio devices
- Transparent Software based Audio Mixer
- Allows applications to share the same "real" audio device regardless of what format is requested by the application.
- Supports recording and full duplex in addition to playback.
- Ability to mix stereo and multichannel audio streams up to 7.1/200Khz/32bit.
- Supports full 24 bit range without loss of precision during internal computations.
- Each application has its own independant volume controls.
- Supports loop back recording. This enables you to "record-what-you-hear". Typically this is useful for recording streaming audio or trapping audio from applications
- 64bit internal processing guarantees audio fidelity and precision if the audio data needs to be converted.
- New device enumeration and mixer API makes it very easy to manage devices programatically.

Today Linux's USB support is vastly superior to any Windows, performance was and so on.

What are the major deficincies in the Windows USB stack?

Linux doesn't require dodgy third-party drivers.

Neither does Windows. But they are quite useful if you have an nVidia or ATI GPU on either operating system.

Recent ALSA HD Audio drivers don't work out of the box on my system: the device is recognized, but I hear nothing. I had better luck using OSS (not part of any standard distribution) and RHEL 5 (which uses an old version of ALSA): both work through the speakers, but the headphone jack does nothing. Windows's built-in HD Audio drivers also work through the speakers only.

We have the best built-in full disk encryption, built-in virtualization, and there's SELinux, which is much better than what Windows has to offer.

But Linux distributions aren't competing with Windows alone. They are competiting with Windows and third-party software. And Linux distributions often need third-party software to be fully useful. (I, for one, enjoy 3D acceleration and MP3 playback capability.)

Certain Linux distributions might have the best built-in full disk encryption. But then again, among modern desktop operating systems, only certain versions of Vista and certain recent Linux distributions have built-in full disk encryption. Third-party Windows FDE implementations are available, including open-source TrueCrypt.

The best open-source desktop virtualization software is VirtualBox. Any Linux distribution including VirutalBox thus automatically has the best built-in desktop virtualization. (Note that Windows and OS X do not include built-in desktop virtualization). But the same application is available for OS X and Windows. Still, VirtualBox is lacking some useful features in comparison to products from VMware and Parallels.

I am puzzled as to why SELinux matters on a desktop system.

Soo, hm yeah, there is this applications thing, or the lack thereof. Really? Most apps now run in a browser window. And what is the situation today, in the browser war? Internet Explorer 8 BETA sucks as much, compared to modern browsers, as early, crashy Mozilla sucked compared to IE 5. And here at the office today, someone had to watch a video sent by the communications dept. Windows couldn't play it. They ended up downloading VLC with Firefox, and it worked great.

"Most apps run in a browser window?" There are many web applications out there, yet I find myself using real applications when they are available.

VLC? Most Linux distributions won't even ship a MP3 decoder! You need third party software to effectively support the popular audio & video formats on any recent desktop OS.

Before ALSA, one would open audio devices just like files, acquire audio data just like reading files, play audio just like writing files. ALSA went the Redmond way, one different API for each different type of data.

You must be talking about OSS. I agree that a file-based open/close/read/write API is usually elegant and intuitive. Unfortunately, it breaks down a little when you try to apply it to audio programming, among other things, and you end up with something like this.

Oh just out of interest, what is the latency on OSS like. I have never checked.

Depends on how you use it. If you mmap the device then you don't get any of the automatic sample rate conversion, you're writing directly to the device's buffer so you get whatever latency the device provides. I'm just writing to the device and using all of that, and I don't notice any delay between pressing the play / pause button and hearing / stopping hearing sound. I'm using OSS on FreeBSD though - on Linux it might well be worse. You can tweak the size of the OSS buffer with an ioctl if you want (smaller buffers give lower latency, bigger buffers let you interrupt your application more without hearing pops). The default buffer size is intended to give around a 50ms maximum latency. This page has more information.

I've been researching this for my own Linux-based HTPC and the sound card can be very important for nice sound. The more expensive ones support transcoding even simple stereo into Dolby Digial Live multichannel sound and some even to its THX competitor. This signal can then be sent to an amp capable of decoding it.

Anyhoo, these Asus Xonar cards have an audio chip called Oxygen HD (see the linked review, just under the last title on the first page). This is just a fancy name for C-media's CMI8788. AFAICR ALSA support is still under development without official support while OSS supports the chip. Some manufacturers prefer the non mandatory OSS licensing of OSS.

Who's scratching their head right now? :)

I've been researching this for my own Linux-based HTPC and the sound card can be very important for nice sound. The more expensive ones support transcoding even simple stereo into Dolby Digial Live multichannel sound and some even to its THX competitor. This signal can then be sent to an amp capable of decoding it.

Anyhoo, these Asus Xonar cards have an audio chip called Oxygen HD (see the linked review, just under the last title on the first page). This is just a fancy name for C-media's CMI8788. AFAICR ALSA support is still under development without official support while OSS supports the chip. Some manufacturers prefer the non mandatory OSS licensing of OSS.

Who's scratching their head right now? :)

Windows on a Cube didn't work anymore, our wireless connectivity stopped working.

You might need to get some slightly different hardware in a few cases. These items are pieces of hardware that are made in a more transparent way, and thus have open source drivers available for them. If you buy such hardware, you will typically find that its' performance isn't only better in Linux, but in Windows as well.

For starters, I suggest replacing the wireless modem or router, if you can. Get an Ethernet ADSL or ADSL2 router; there are a ton of Ethernet cards with open source drivers that work just fine, with either Linux or the BSDs.

In terms of sound cards, you can also try looking at this list. Of the cards listed there, I've used both the Intel AC97 and SiS 7012 with both Linux and FreeBSD before, and had very good results.

For video cards, I've always used an nVidia card myself. These have Linux drivers, but they are closed source, which some people object to.

For keyboards, try and stick to PS/2 rather than USB...I've heard about Ubuntu having problems with USB keyboards before.

Ubuntu has come a long way in terms of hardware support...but unfortunately some OEMs still insist on selling closed hardware of dubious quality; usually because it's cheap. If you have an offline friend who knows about Linux themselves, they may also be able to help you with this.

Buying a closed box from someone like Dell is absolute poison as far as I'm concerned...but I know there are people who like doing it.

Take a look at http://www.maudio.co.uk/index.php?do=support.drive rs

"Release Notes Linux/UNIX

M-Audio uses a 3rd Party Vendor for Unix support. 4Front Technologies
develops and supports UNIX drivers for the Revolution and Delta Series of Products. The software is available for free evaluation and non-profit use but 4Front charges a fee for technical support and commercial use. They can be found at the following web address:

http://www.opensound.com/"

What a joke.

I am trying to port my company's engine to Linux running on the latest Mandrake 2006 just released. The damn master volume does nothing and the Envy24Control just crashes when run. Searching all over the Net trying to come up to speed with Linux sound drivers is not a productive way to port game code.

It is frustrating enough that I am ready to just go back to WinXP.

Here's one way.... Get a small computer, big harddrive.

Get an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (~$100) and maybe a right-angle PCI adapter to fit it into your little BTX box or whatever. Load your OS of choice. You've already got plans for the rest - that way should be just fine. Rip your stuff onto the drive (encode with FLAC), hook it up to an amplifier, and you're all set.

The 2496 has already got RCA IN/OUT and Digital connectors (read the specifics on compatibility and what you can and cannot use at the same time) making hookup easy. It will also record at impressive rates and resolutions (playback too if you've got fancy hi-res sources). You can find drivers for most of the following at OSS (these are commercial drivers that run ~$50 for the most common OSs that include free tech support and upgrades for 2 years).

* Linux (x86, Alpha, PowerPC)
* VxWorks (Tornado)
* LynxOS (x86, PowerPC)
* SCO Open Server
* SCO UnixWare
* Solaris (x86, Sparc)
* IBM AIX
* FreeBSD
* BSD/OS
* OpenBSD
* NetBSD
* HP-UX

You could buy a mixer and some mics to do some high quality recordings too. (I've picked up a 10 channel Yamaha mixer [MG10/2] w/ 4 mic inputs (phantom capable) for $99 and a Samson CO2 matched pair of small condensers for ~$120 at Sam Ash to do recordings with a setup very similar to that above and it worked quite well.) No experience with the OSS drivers but they seem to be responsive to email inquirys about specifics and have a free trial available.

I dream of a portable custom BSD based solution that has easy controls (serial keypad and LCD - "real" buttons and switches), could be setup for automated recordings, has a builtin mixer, microphone inputs (phantom powered for my dream large condenser pair), and speaker/headphone driver, AND is powerful enough to run baudline for use in the field. Background processes could compress material as I was recording (incremental, selectively, to be sure you could grab the entire recording - even if your quality had to suffer - but you'd get the highest possible of any given event). The network interface could stream audio at selectable bitrates (.ogg peeling) OR amplify a stream like an internet radio station. AND it could do my laundry for me and fit in a backpack. If anybody else would be interesed in something like this please contact me and I'd love to collaborate. [ bricoleur !AT! 80d !DOT! org ]

If it doesn't, there's always FreeBSD amd64 and oss. I use it for my nForce 3 onboard sound, and it works like a charm. And, it's free for personal/home use. Only supports x86 on netbsd, though.

Example #1, I needed full duplex operation of my soundcard. OSS and ALSA didn't do it. So I plopped down 20 something bucks for the OpenSound drivers. Worked right out of the box.

Example #2, I had to have Office XP for work because other people use macros in their Excel spreadsheets. OpenOffice/StarOffice don't do macros yet. So I bought CrossOver Office and Office XP works awesome, right from my Linux desktop.

There is a market for Linux software. I know, I buy them when I can.

OSS is part of enlightenment?

Since when?

The only company that I know is producing commerical drivers for linux is 4Front Technologies. No idea on the quality though
Rus

OSS supports many Yamaha sound cards. Look here.

That's a great link you posted. Even better, it does appear at least 1 is supported under Linux. The ALSA Project's Soundcard Matrix lists support for the Midiman Delta 66, and there's also OSS/Linux beta support for the LynxONE (though binary non-free).

Of course, they'll both set you back 400-500 bucks... Fortunately, the still well-performing Turtle Beach cards have long enjoyed good Linux support.

Have you tried the commercial OSS driver? It's very reasonably priced, installs easily, works perfectly on my dual soundcards, and supports a virtual mixer device that plays "up to 4 audio apps at a time." I'm a totally satisfied customer.

But ALSA lacks good documentation aimed at application developers like this: http://www.opensound.com/pguide/

Until it does, expect ALSA's exceptance to be slooooow!

I had no real problems with finding *decent* soundcards for a professional pianist two years ago. In the end, we chose the Midiman M-Audio Delta-66 (and had the machine custom built by Microway -- we'd probably build it ourselves this time). Other nice cards from RME (like the Hammerfall and Digi96 series) were also available. Between the cards supported by 4Front and ALSA, there is really no shortage. This was less true two years ago, but we had no troubles. I guess the M-Audio isn't really high-end, but it is clearly *decent*. We were on a budget for the machine, so going over $600 for the soundcard wasn't really an option.

The M-Audio Delta series are pretty nice. The analog inputs and outputs are contained in a separate breakout box, which makes connections easier and helps reduce electrical noise. The pianist has found the noise levels acceptable for mastering with a good headphone amp and headphones. Ambiant fan noise, on the other hand, is something we never really solved (and hence the headphones), but at least that's not a linux problem. ;-)

The pianist had never used linux before, and by now is something of a zealot. =-) He's been using snd for waveform manipulation (but doesn't use any of the lisp extension capabilities, and I can't blame him for that ;-), and has expressed some frustration at the software available. That said, he hasn't updated his software for 2 years, and thus I have no good information about the current state of affairs.

-Paul Komarek

I didn't know that OSS existed during the WW2! The developers must be *really* old now ;)

Actually, if you check the list at opensound.com, you'll see that they support the whole Delta series of cards, with a few limitations; M Audio have even advertised Linux compatibility in their recent print ads.

You'll also find support for the RME Digi/32 series & the Digi/96 series, all very fine cards. Also, they have recently added support for the Hoontech DSP24, which is a 8x8 24-bit card with a companion A/D & D/A converter box, not too unlike the Echo Layla. So, there are options at least on the semi-pro level.

And as for ProTools, the changes in the underlying audio handling in OS X means that, at the moment, ProTools is completely unsupported. It relies on a proprietary interface, and an Apple rep said in the recent EQ Magazine that they have no intention of supporting proprietary hardware interfaces - that will be up to ProTools to do. They probably will, since the bulk of their users are probably on Macs, but it's not native by any means.

Now it will get ported into FreeBSD (my preferred BSD) and prolly OpenBSD.

Nice to have native choices other than Open Sound although 20 bucks isn't that much to spend.

" Now if someone got this working with Linux, you could serve your MP3 library to multiple rooms in the house as separate streams."

A quick look at Google pulled up about 6,000 articles, mostly old. Have a look around, you're bound to find someone who knows something at these sites:

Here's an old slashdot article about Solaris8. From this article, I don't see Solaris8 on x86 becoming a hot development platform, but judge for yourself.

Here's an older looking page about sound on x86 hardware with Solaris.

Here's one from Gnome. This is one of the slickest desktops around. If it don't do sound yet, try KDE.

Look for atricles with your specific hardware and linux. I found out that MediaGX had some Linux sound support that way. It's just some hardware that I had. That sound was supported was luck of the draw. I'll bet you want better assurances than that. Sun has a forum for questions like this, here.

Hopefully, someone who knows something will answer your post. I'd like to know what you find, please post back if you learn anything useful.

• KDE
  
• Open Sound System (I think)
  
• DOSEmu
  
  All pretty cool/useful stuff

Some bad news, all you Vortex1-based-card-owners, this bit of happiness from Aureal is for their Vortex2 ONLY. Fortunately for us Vortex1 owners, the Linux/*BSD drivers will be out before end of Q2/2000. In the meantime, there is always http://www.OpenSound.com/ for us Montego owners.

"Lucky to get it working on anything apart from a particular spec of machine"?

If you've got a sound app working in one place using the standard OSSLite subsystem, it should work everywhere (including on the systems of those enlightened folks using ALSA, which is a far better system, for their sound). Look at Speak Freely -- I can't see ViaVoice requiring many sound system features it doesn't support, and it works quite well.

This is probably not going to help you much but I did notice that OpenSound ship drivers (that are not free) that provide the ability to share the sound card device between multiple apps and mix the results.

This is for example, running two MP3 players at the one time, each one not aware of the other, but both playing out of the same device. This would probably allow you to use/write something with XAudio to do the job

Regards,

Jamz

In the not so distant past, before x11amp became xmms, I made a xmms port to AIX. Then before I had a chance to roll the changes back into the common source 4front took over and closed the CVS server. Just recently they made an OSS port to AIX. Now, there isn't any 'need' for a direct output plugin since you just use the OSS plugin in xmms. The only problem is that there seems to be a conflict of interest on the part of 4front because they are trying to sell copies of OSS for $30. I get the feeling from the complete lack of response from them that they are not interested in the direct output plug-in because it could cause competition for their proprietary (for sale) OSS driver. Look at the message you get when you try to download a cripple ware OSS driver.
Please fill out this form before downloading Open Sound System The evaluation copy of OSS comes with a FREE limited time evaluation license which is activated on the day you install OSS. The software will only work for a limited time and has to be unloaded and reloaded into the operating system periodically. You may contact 4Front Technologies for technical support.

Sounds like someone's trying to create news where there's none. BTW, I never saw a linux version of OSSPlayer, I seem to remember however, a BSD version of it, which was really just a port of X11Amp back when the source wasn't available.

By renaming the program to Xmmsmsmsms and dropping the "OSSPlayer" they tried to choke any chances of starting a Sound API war! Too bad it didn't work.

IMHO, the Linux sound API sucks whichever one you use try to playback 6 channels at a time in a CS4232(6,8) chip, why you can't? whoah!.

ALSA has a rather small portion of new code compared to its former existence as the Linux Ultrasound Project. While both of these projects support a wide range of codecs, there's very little Synth support though ALSA has better synth support (great legacy GF(GFA) 1 synth support). They both fail miserably in supporting newer synth chips like the DREAM synths (SAM9407 for one).

The only sound API that will succeed is the one that can provide a wider range of codec, synth and midi support on a wide range of soundboard. And that will require manufacturer support.

Getting your PCI64 to work is actually quite easy.

After messing around in the kernel for quite some time with the Ensoniq drivers it didn't quite work the way I wanted it.

So i thought "what the heck" and tried the OSS package from Open Sound. Works just the way it should.

Okay okay, it's payware but hell the rest of my Linux is free anyway so I didn't really mind the concession.

If you can spare the $30,- (20 for the core and 10 for the PCI64/128 support) than it's WELL worth the money.

-rbb

Just a little titbit. The latest OSS version has BETA support for CD Audio and MIDI ports on the SB Live! Not the most exciting thing in the world but still... Open Sound Status Page

Excuse that... 4front doesn't go to the right page... it's actually www.opensound.com

SB Live!: Driver development started but still months away from beta due to no documentation. We are investigating some other mechanisms of developing the driver by means of reverse engineering and/or using PCI bus logic analyzers. Managed to get the AC97 mixers and the MIDI port working. So you can only hear AudioCDs and use the MPU401 MIDI port. No beta release dates available yet.

-jab

I have an eTower 333c and it runs linux fine. Here's a list of possible gotchas, depending on your perspective on things.

1. Need a new modem to replace the LoseModem.

2. It only has 1 serial port, so with an external modem, that's it.

3. It only has 3 slots (1 ISA, 1 PCI, and 1 ISA/PCI), so it's a touch cramped.

4. I didn't try 4Front Tech's OSS, though the list says they support the Crystal CS4235 chip. I just plugged in an old SB16, taking up the ISA slot.

5. It has only 1 5.25" drive bay, though thankfully it's externally accessible.

6. RedHat 5.1 (and I understand 5.2) ship with XFree86 3.3.2 which doesn't support the ATI Rage IIc onboard. You need XFree86 3.3.1 (or maybe a commercial X server) to support it.

Lest I seem completely down on the box, here's the good I have to say about it:

1. It's up. I have it running the SVGA driver, and it works fine, and fast.

2. It's cheap. Figure $20 for the SB16, another $20 for a 33.6, and $50 for a monitor, and we're still talking under $600 for a great box.

3. It's good enough. 32MB of RAM is fine for me. So is 2GB of HD (I decided to dedicate the other 1GB to some other OS when I heard that eMachines was only refunding $25 for it.) Anyhow, there's still that free drive bay, and HD prices have hit rock bottom and started digging.

Do I recommend it unconditionally? No. Do I think I got my money's worth? Hell, yeah. Will it work for you? YMMV.

I have an eTower 333c and it runs linux fine. Here's a list of possible gotchas, depending on your perspective on things.

1. Need a new modem to replace the LoseModem.

2. It only has 1 serial port, so with an external modem, that's it.

3. It only has 3 slots (1 ISA, 1 PCI, and 1 ISA/PCI), so it's a touch cramped.

4. I didn't try 4Front Tech's OSS, though the list says they support the Crystal CS4235 chip. I just plugged in an old SB16, taking up the ISA slot.

5. It has only 1 5.25" drive bay, though thankfully it's externally accessible.

6. RedHat 5.1 (and I understand 5.2) ship with XFree86 3.3.2 which doesn't support the ATI Rage IIc onboard. You need XFree86 3.3.1 (or maybe a commercial X server) to support it.

Lest I seem completely down on the box, here's the good I have to say about it:

1. It's up. I have it running the SVGA driver, and it works fine, and fast.

2. It's cheap. Figure $20 for the SB16, another $20 for a 33.6, and $50 for a monitor, and we're still talking under $600 for a great box.

3. It's good enough. 32MB of RAM is fine for me. So is 2GB of HD (I decided to dedicate the other 1GB to some other OS when I heard that eMachines was only refunding $25 for it.) Anyhow, there's still that free drive bay, and HD prices have hit rock bottom and started digging.

Do I recommend it unconditionally? No. Do I think I got my money's worth? Hell, yeah. Will it work for you? YMMV.

The audio may be SoundBlaster compatible, but it's not that compatible. Tried the trick of booting into DOS, loading the sound card driver, then loadlin'ing Linux. No luck.

Someone said they had luck with OpenSound, so I'll try that next.

Summary: Soundblaster Live does not work in Linux

I accidently bought an SB Live since I'd grown so used to Linux supporting most common PC hardware. Mistake.

The last I heard (and I can't recall the source, so take this with a large grain of salt...) was that Creative Labs wasn't releasing the device specification right away.

The OSS folks claimed 4Q99 support when I tried to install the eval version of OSS.

Since this was a bit longer than I wanted to wait, I went out and purchased a Sound Blaster PCI128, which works great with the es1370 driver included with the 2.2.1 kernel. I just had to hack the /etc/conf.modules a bit to get it to autoload properly.

Given Creative Labs' spotty history of support for Linux, I'm strongly tempted to abandon my 8-year-old brand loyalty. I'll have to see how the Live support comes.