Porting ALSA drivers to OSS may be easy, according to OSS ;)

[Bruno]

Well, I looked here:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=pcm&sektion=4

Instead of here:
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.2.1R/hardware-i386.html#AEN1101
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.10R/hardware-i386.html#AEN1762

I haven't tried FreeBSD for a long time (before SB Live! was supported) 
but I knew my SB Live! is supported for some time now.

I also have read comments from others about sound support on FreeBSD, and 
when I compared the supported cards on the pcm man page with the 
commercial OSS and ALSA supported cards I felt they were right.

But I'm much happier now that I know I've searched the wrong places and 
FreeBSD supports much more soundcards that I could have imagined.

I can't remember which is the soundcard in the old Compaq Presario laptop 
my wife has.

But my desktop will migrate in a few days. Thanks for the quick answer :)

Bruno

BTW, you're right about the drivers, I haven't understood it the first 
time (OSS API != OSS drivers).


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Nelson [mailto:dnelson at allantgroup.com]
> Sent: quarta-feira, 26 de Maio de 2004 20:30
> To: Bruno
> Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: Porting ALSA drivers to OSS may be easy, according to OSS
> ;)
>
>
> In the last episode (May 26), Bruno said:
>> I know FreeBSD is mainly conceived as a performance server OS and
>> lacks in the multimedia field when compared with Linux which is much
>> more generic.
>>
>> But in terms of sound I think the scenario could change easily: you
>> don't have ALSA drivers but according to this post it's possible to
>> convert ALSA drivers into free OSS drivers:
>>
>> http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=48#48
>>
>> This could mean reduced need for commercial OSS driver support :) And
>> of course there may be licensing issues.
>>
>> Not really my problem since I have a SB Live!, but this could easily
>> improve FreeBSD image on the multimedia *NIX field :)
>
> Are there very many cards not supported by FreeBSD?  Note that OSS can
> mean two things: drivers provided by 4front, or a userland API for
> playing sound.  FreeBSD's sound system provides an OSS API, but is not
> OSS internally.  Porting a Linux ALSA driver to FreeBSD is probably
> about as easy as porting a Linux OSS driver.
>