"4Front Technologies is announcing the availability of Open Sound System version 4.0 for Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Open Server6 and UnixWare7. Open Sound System is a cross platform audio architecture that provides drivers for most consumer and professional audio devices and comes with an API that allows applications to be simply recompiled on any of the supported operating systems."
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Member since:2006-03-28
If OSS contains binary-only drivers, then it doesn't sound so "open" to me. But, hey, why start this whole binary vs. open source argument again?
I really don't get the point of having OSS be available for "Solaris, UnixWare7, and OpenServer6" as I doubt many people use these OSes on their desktops (and not many servers even have/use sound cards to begin with). If you're a *nix geek that uses a *nix on his desktop, it's probably Linux, so there's little reason to move from the default (and much better supported) ALSA. An argument might be made that it would be nice to have a standard API for sound between the BSD flavors and Linux, but I don't think we'll ever see it (not to say that I'd be opposed to such an effort).
I remember back in my RedHat days (before Fedora came to be, and RedHat had a desktop distro called "RedHat Linux"), OSS was used, and things were bad...then, ALSA came; and things were good 
Edited 2007-03-16 18:11
Member since:2006-01-07
"An argument might be made that it would be nice to have a standard API for sound between the BSD flavors and Linux, but I don't think we'll ever see it (not to say that I'd be opposed to such an effort)."
Theoretically, an application can use GStreamer, then the Gstreamer could automagically use the right output plugin (see: autosink or gconfaudiosink, et al.).
Then again, this is much higher level and doesn't work as nicely when you want to do lower-level sound hardware manipulation though...
Member since:2006-10-08
"I remember back in my RedHat days (before Fedora came to be, and RedHat had a desktop distro called "RedHat Linux"), OSS was used, and things were bad...then, ALSA came; and things were good "
May I ask which problems these were? I'm using FreeBSD for more than 5 years now at home at a regular basis, so it seems that I'm using OSS, and I didn't have any problems related to sound (playback and recording).
Member since:2006-01-12
>>If OSS contains binary-only drivers, then it doesn't sound so "open" to me. But, hey, why start this whole binary vs. open source argument again?<<
Open as in "Open System" (think POSIX or Single Unix Standard) as oppose to "Open Source". The point been that it provides a standard sound API that is "open" and works on multiple platforms. As an "Open System" one's implentation can be under any license that you want as long as you follow the API standard.
Think of OpenVMS, they reason they changed the name from plain old VMS to OpenVMS was due to adding of Posix api subsystem (the "Open" bit)
Member since:2005-07-06
If OSS contains binary-only drivers, then it doesn't sound so "open" to me. But, hey, why start this whole binary vs. open source argument again?
There was a time when open was also commonly associated with *open* standards, and not just source code. In this case, OSS is open by standard, not by source.
Member since:2005-07-06
I really don't get the point of having OSS be available for "Solaris, UnixWare7, and OpenServer6" as I doubt many people use these OSes on their desktops (and not many servers even have/use sound cards to begin with). If you're a *nix geek that uses a *nix on his desktop, it's probably Linux, so there's little reason to move from the default (and much better supported) ALSA. An argument might be made that it would be nice to have a standard API for sound between the BSD flavors and Linux, but I don't think we'll ever see it (not to say that I'd be opposed to such an effort).
Bzzzt.
There actually quite a few people who have workstations, etc. that use real UNIX on their desktop (not UNIX-like systems such as Linux, etc.).
Or, they use sound cards for which no public specifications are available and only OSS supports them.
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Member since:
2006-01-07
One of the benefits of commercial Open Sound System versus the in-kernel ALSA is that, like NVidia's and ATi's proprietary video card drivers, Open Sound System contains binary-only drivers for a lot of new sound hardware, such as Creative's "new" X-Fi cards. Also, Open Sound System's software-mixing supposedly works much better than dmix for those with older cards.