Reminder on Sound for developers

Just a quick reminder about getting the sound to work---

A lot of Linux developers who use sound in their software tend to forget that not all of us are able to use ALSA drivers, that some of us are relegated to OSS because of weird or higher-end soundcards. While there is an aoss script whos functionality is to pull in ALSA stuff and push OSS stuff, it doesn't always work.

So please, if you could, as you're working on the sound issues, do not forget those of us using OSS.

I'd be grateful for any sound at this point. I don't even care about streaming audio, I'd just like to hear footsteps and embedded wav sounds.

I doubt they'd code it specific to ALSA or OSS. OpenAL is the "standard" for gaming audio development it seems, and it supports both modes.

I'm actually upset at the total lack of updates to the Linux client side lately. It would be nice for a Linden to come in and at least reply to this to acknowledge that SOMETHING is going on, or tell us that "it wont' happen for a while" or anything at all so we can set some sorta expectations even if they aren't good ones =)

No kidding! There have been no fixes since I joined. No word from any Linden. Nothing. Are we dead in the water? Is there something to look forward to? What's the deal? Linux is the EASIEST OS to develop on! It would be rather nice to be able to use my WM's clipboard instead of having to use an XEvent generator to fake it (and only one-way, at that!).

I wouldn't say that it's the easiest OS to develop on. For one thing, there isn't nearly as much of a standardization as there is on Windows for doing sound and 3d. You can use SDL, OpenGL, Allegro, or anything else. For sound you can do Alsa directly, OSS directly, OpenAL, arts, esound, and who knows what other sound framework. Windows at least standardized it's multimedia systems so that you use one API for all of it.

I'd say it's more correct to say that Linux is more flexible rather than saying it's easier.

I'd imagine that one reason is that they "outsourced" the development to Icculus, and he's likely busy doing Unreal Tournament 2007 or some other game port (Neverwinter Nights 2?)

Either way it'd be nice to hear something, and maybe get the in-world LUG active again.

I agree wholeheartedly with the former, Valen; as to the latter, every Wednesday at about an hour after the world comes back up, at ninjafoo`s place.

There are quite a few wrappers for ALSA so that OSS and other interfaces can be pushed into ALSA compatibility. Most forms of linux seem to be on alsa or something which can speak it. Though it appears through running the client that there is some basis for sound being writen in with each update, getting something in the client is the first step. Though some sort of word on it from LL would be comforting, guessing leads to so many bad things.

http://icculus.org/cgi-bin/finger/finger.pl?user=icculus&date=2006-07-07&time=15-19-16

"Second Life:
Nothing quite like ripping out FMOD for OpenAL. This is something else I'm
starting to specialize in, I think."