Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 27th Sep 2008 22:14 UTC, submitted by diegocg
Lennart Poettering, main programmer of the PulseAudio project, has written a 'Guide Through The Linux Sound API Jungle': "At the Audio MC at the Linux Plumbers Conference one thing became very clear: it is very difficult for programmers to figure out which audio API to use for which purpose and which API not to use when doing audio programming on Linux. So here's my try to guide you through this jungle."
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Member since:
2007-06-28
this article is pretty nice for developers just getting into linux audio. especially considering the author's affiliation with pulseaudio. i'm glad he's being forthright about pulseaudio's purpose and not trying to make it out to be some magical one-size-fits-all solution, like some people not related to the project seem to believe.
but, from an end-user perspective, most of the confusion is very much blown out of proportion.
if you're a typical linux user, you ARE using ALSA, unless you've gone out of your way to avoid it. ALSA simply provides audio drivers for your soundcard.
if you're using a desktop environment, you probably are running an additional sound daemon so that multiple applications can output audio simulaneously, like a software mixer. if you're on an older gnome distro, this is ESD. on a new gnome distro, it's probably pulseaudio. if you're on an old KDE distro, this is arts. on a KDE4 distro, phonon, i guess.
none of these things are choices a typical user has to make. they're all just small pieces of the pie.
the only time an end-user really should have to make a choice is if they are doing any professional audio work. if they need a low-latency solution with inter-application audio streaming, then it's advisable they read up on JACK.
honestly, that's really all there is to know for MOST end-users.
your hardware talks to ALSA, which talks to your sound server, and add JACK if you need to use professional audio software.
the only truly damning problem is when a distro ships a misconfigured sound setup and the end-user is forced to troubleshoot with no background knowledge. for example, the latest ubuntu release with it's funky pulseaudio setup.
lastly, the OSS situation really depresses me. is it superior to ALSA? maybe it is, maybe it isn't. but, ultimately, they shot themselves in the foot with slow updates and licensing problems. ALSA superceded them because we NEEDED a solution we could count on. they didn't catch up until it was too late. crying that it's not fair isn't going to change the fact that OSS missed their window of opportunity. heck, they *squandered* their lead.