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Linux Audio Development
JulesVD writes "There is an article from Linux Journal about the latest plans for Linux audio functionality from the first developer's conference in Germany. Developers from more than a dozen countries attended this successful conference, representing organizations such as SuSE, Linux Audio Systems, Stanford University, IRCAM and Centro Tempo Reale. Topic discussions included in-depth presentations of the rapidly evolving Linux sound system, a look at the details of programming for professional audio standards and a survey of recent applications and audio-centric Linux distributions." Mmm...interesting reading (blantant plug for cool program), but I think the most important question is will it make Scrubby happy?
Contrast with the monolithic kernel that linux has. Creative would need to participate and coordinate with linus et al from start to finish.
Erh no! Most, if not all drivers in ALSA were written without any interaction from the kernel folks. ALSA is now integrated in the 2.5.x kernel, but that doesn't mean driver developers will have to deal with Linus et al. They just deal with Jaroslav, the ALSA maintainer. All mainstream cards are already supported by ALSA. If a company doesn't want to provide docs it can always choose to write and distribute their driver on their own.
In short, the monolithic kernel is an albatross around linux' neck when it comes to wanting hardware support from the manufacturers.
Nonsense.
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
That's a good conspiracy theory. Another theory is that linux cant dynamically add/remove display devices in userland at run time the way windows can.
You'd either have TV out enabled all the time, or CRT all the time, or both, but you wouldnt be able to switch at will.
It could also be because of the MODELINE nonsense in your xf89config. TV out has some pretty specific frequency requirements, and perhaps the ability to tweak those while enabled would damage the card, and then void the warranty - but if you voided the warranty with a matrox driver, you dont void the warranty, so they have to continually replace cards for all the 'tweakers' out there.
Or it could be that you're looking a gift horse in the mouth. Want all the features of the vid card to work? Fire up emacs and get a-crackin'.
BTW, IIRC macrovision is a hardware feature, not a software one. There is no 'linux support' to be written, save flipping it on via a hardware register. They're only required that it be present, it can be disabled as easily under windows (a registry tweak for most cards) as it could be under linux.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
-Simon
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
And ALSA is the way every card will work from now on? Or will it change to something else with kernel 2.6?
:-).
The ALSA API in kernel 2.5.x will be the same one in kernel 2.6.
Vendors like standards and specifications. They dont like researchers and academics and expiriments.
Vendors look at the bottom line. If there's enough incentive they will write against any API (*cough* Windows *cough*
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
LSA's biggest drawback is the project policy that software mixing should be done in userspace (presumably by a separate project)
This just is not true. ALSA now has the dmix plugin that handles software mixing in user space all by itself. Its very, very efficient and has no impact on latency (though it can't offer JACK-style sample-synchronous execution). dmix makes regular software mixing "servers" irrelevant, and JACK fills the remaining needs.
Not only do they create drivers for their chips (SBLive! and Audigy series, OpenAL), they release the code as Open Source. The driver sin the Linux kernel came from Creative, not some 3rd party. Another reason to support Creative (as if having the best stuff wasn't enough of a reason)
http://opensource.creative.com
A guy called Austin Acton has put together the Mandrake Audio Workstation HowTo for Mandrake 9.1.
It uses packages contributed to Mandrake 9.1 to build an audio workstation (including a low-latency "multimedia" kernel) - using URPMI to simplify package dependency issues.
Quote from the HowTo: "You can setup a professional quality audio workstation in an afternoon or less, with Mandrake Linux. No compiling. No text editing. No dependencies. It's this easy.".
I don't know enough about computer audio to comment further, but you might be interested in checking it out.