Open Sound System

OSS 4.2 build 2007 is being announced for Linux, Solaris, UnixWare, OSR6 and FreeBSD

- Added support for LynxTWO AES16e (PCI-express) soundcard for Linux and Solaris only.
- Added new HDAudio PCI device IDs

Where are the sources, please ?... I can't find them. Only build 2006 sources are available, including on the mercurial repository...

I have emailed support about this and my post over not getting emails from the forum a few months ago, but it seems to be ignored - even though I am actually a paid customer!

Ouch. Well, I'm not of 4front so can't reply for them, but for now, you can subscribe to the announcement forum feed and so get notice of updates [they at least update here when releasing a new version]. (Btw, Lynx is the one closed source driver included with oss, so not much should be pulled to mercurial if anything?).

Thanks - yes I have been subscribed for some time, and have been emailed about your post now. Presumably the extra HDaudio IDs will be of use to someone.

JustAnother wrote:Presumably the extra HDaudio IDs will be of use to someone.

Those "new HDAudio PCI device IDs" could be very useful for me, if they would fix old bugs in the notorious "generic driver" oss_hdaudio

KNOWN PROBLEMS
In general Azalia based systems (laptops/motherboards) would require a custom driver to work properly. Due to enormous number of different systems it is not possible to develop such custom drivers for all systems. A generic driver is used for systems that don't have dedicated drivers. http://manuals.opensound.com/usersguide/hdaudio.html

However codecs are different. To make things even worse motherboard manufacturers have complete freedom to decide which I/O pin they connect the jacks and other audio inputs and outputs. It is not enough to write just one mixer driver for each codec. This needs to be done by hand for every single motherboard (unless there are boards that have the pins assigned in the same way).
The mixgen.c can be used to create a skeleton of a mixer driver. Then the result can be fine tuned by using trial and error approach. http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.a ... devel/1155

Notice that ALSA has similar problems https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto
The users of the "very advanced open-source crap" are invited to file bug reports
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingSoundProblems
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs/
http://linuxhaters.blogspot.de/2008/08/ ... m-all.html

The "closed source" version of OSS4 must be upgraded urgently, because the old licence expired. Otherwise, Ubuntu users may ask "very strange questions" on the forum, for example: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4198

The "open source" version of OSS4 might be upgraded after summer holidays, or after Christmas.

In any case, we have to wait for the much desired "dedicated drivers" just like our brothers in Vanuatu are waiting for John Frum and his Cargo planes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmlYe2KS0-Y [Russian translation]

The problem is that it is rather difficult (for OSS4 developers) to develop "custom drivers" for all existing notebooks http://manuals.opensound.com/usersguide/hdaudio.html
Perhaps, the most obvious solution is to teach ordinary users how to make own drivers. What is needed is a comprehensive manual, a kind of step-by-step tutorial.

A simple toolkit with a manual for dummies might be a magic solution to all problems. It may unleash creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, and innovation. It may remove social barriers between "stupid users" and "arrogant developers" and create an atmosphere where participants will feel involved and valuable, because their input will make a difference. A lot of Russian kids (not to mention audiophiles) might be happy to have such a Lego for making audio drivers.

In our day, if you want to survive on the market, you have to provide tools with which ordinary users can create own drivers, or own applications. What the users really need is to solve their problems. They need a kind of Lego for making own toys. Example: Android SDK

In essence, OSS4 is a Stone Age technology. The users have to wait for years until the developers provide "dedicated" audio drivers for notebooks, which may soon be out of use. If OSS4 cannot respond to the technological challenges of 21st century, it has to be consigned to the dustbin of history

Those extra HDAudio device IDs are already in the Mercurial repository.

Really, where is the source code?
Please make it availible because otherwise ArchLinux will drop support (and also they need a maintainer)!!!
See for yourselves: https://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2012-September/023511.html

I beg you, do something about this, because I would never want to switch to ALSA/PuleAudio again.
Also, it would be nice if someone looked at the bug mentioned.

best regards
nuc

I think all that's really needed is for someone to add the tag to hg and make the stable tarballs. Shouldn't be a problem for 4front, and should have been done already IMHO.

cesium wrote:I think all that's really needed is for someone to add the tag to hg and make the stable tarballs. Shouldn't be a problem for 4front, and should have been done already IMHO.

Well, it's 2 months now. C'mon...

nuc wrote:Really, where is the source code?
Please make it availible because otherwise ArchLinux will drop support (and also they need a maintainer)!!!

Don't panic! They will drop OSS in any case. They are so busy with PulseAudio and SystemD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering
They lost users and developers. This is the problem. The kids are trying to do the job http://www.archlinux.org/developers/
Ignorance, arrogance, and intolerance do not seem to be very nice preconditions for cooperation and collaboration.

There is a lot of other Linux distributions. If you want to learn Linux, you may try Gentoo.

Sorry about the long delay in posting the source tar balls. they are now up.

dev wrote:Sorry about the long delay in posting the source tar balls. they are now up.

Thank you. The Maintainer has already taken notice.

@igorzwx:
thanks for your advice but I will stay with Arch. It's the first distro that I am really content with (and I tried alot: OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, GoboLinux...). I agree to you that pulse is a plague, however I dont know what to think of Systemd because people have very different opinions. What I dislike most about Systemd is that it's not compatible to non-Linux systems.
I disagree with you that Arch is totally against OSS - just they need a maintainer. I would gladly do this but I fear I do not have the proper skills for maintaining a sound system .

UPDATE: Good News! After being a few days in the AUR, a new maintainer has taken up responsibility for the OSS package! It's now to be found in the Community repo: http://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/oss/


@dev: Is it actually that difficult to implement support for suspend-to-ram? I guess it's important for many users so I'm wondering why it's still not implemented (?). Will you implement it in future versions?