[wplug] State of Linux Sound

[Robert E. Coutch]

Here's a few things you might want to look into.

1 - If any of the programs using sound were designed for OSS and not ALSA, I 
could see where you would have the problems.

2 - The dmix plugin for ALSA might be helpful. Do a google on it.

On Saturday 21 October 2006 07:51 pm, Brandon Kuczenski wrote:
> Hello list.  I am writing to ask a question about a nuisance that has been
> troubling me for awhile regarding sound on Linux.  I'm using Debian with a
> modern kernel (2.6.11) and Gnome for my desktop.
>
> The problem is with sound: specifically, only one program may make sound
> at a time; one program having control over sound causes others to fail
> silently (in multiple senses).  My understanding is that, due to /dev/dsp
> being but a single file, only one process is allowed write access to the
> file and so only one process may make sound.
>
> The solution to this is to run a dsp broker program like Esound or aRts.
> The problem is, esound is stalled at version 0.2 and has not undergone
> development in some integer number of years.  It is buggy, has huge
> delays, and many programs don't interact well with it.  Because of that, I
> have it disabled.  I don't know if aRts works with Gnome.
>
> However, it wouldn't help me anyway since I often have multiple users
> logged into the computer, using various window managers, any one of which
> may want to make sounds periodically.
>
> So right now I have given various users sudo privileges to kill processes
> that might be using sound, so that they can 'steal' it on demand. But this
> is obviously not a permanent solution.
>
> Is there any chance of this being fixed in the future?  Is it a
> deeply-seated deficiency in linux?  Some unavoidable consequence of some
> aspect of POSIX architecture?  Could it be repaired inside the kernel?
> Is that contrary to dogma?
>
> Or, perhaps, am I misinformed about the state of the art?  Do the BSDs
> have similar problems? etc.
>
> Thanks for info,
> Brandon
>
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