ALSA 1.0.17a & 1.0.18-rc1 Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ALSA 1.0.17a & 1.0.18-rc1 Released

ALSA 1.0.17 was released a month ago, but being released today by the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture camp is a small update in the 1.0.17 series and the first release candidate for ALSA 1.0.18.ALSA 1.0.17a contains a few updates in alsa-lib Core and the PCM API. There isn't anything major in this release, but the change-log can be found on the ALSA Wiki.ALSA 1.0.18-rc1 on the other hand has a plethora of changes...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjY1OQ

[spikestabber]

Phoronix: ALSA 1.0.17a & 1.0.18-rc1 Released

ALSA 1.0.17 was released a month ago, but being released today by the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture camp is a small update in the 1.0.17 series and the first release candidate for ALSA 1.0.18.ALSA 1.0.17a contains a few updates in alsa-lib Core and the PCM API. There isn't anything major in this release, but the change-log can be found on the ALSA Wiki.ALSA 1.0.18-rc1 on the other hand has a plethora of changes...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjY1OQ

Looks like there won't be any X-Fi 20K1 support this time around either.

I fail to see how the Xonar's and Razer's are more important, but I guess it all comes down to not being much work due to being based off an already existing CMI arch. Between these cards and the ASoC fetish, no telling how long X-Fi will be on the backburner being ignored.

Creative should of NDA'd the specs to someone that's actually willing to write a driver.

[cladisch]

I fail to see how the Xonar's and Razer's are more important,

The guy who added the D1 support does not have an X-Fi, so he couldn't have helped you even if he wanted to.

but I guess it all comes down to not being much work due to being based off an already existing CMI arch.

In this particular case, the D1 is almost identical to the DX, so all that was needed was essentially just another PCI ID.

Between these cards and the ASoC fetish

Wolfson and other SoC makers pay developers to write stuff.
I fail to see how their desire to sell chips for Linux devices can be considered a fetish.

no telling how long X-Fi will be on the backburner being ignored.

You seem to assume that James ignores it just to spite you . Actually, he just doesn't have enough free time.

[spikestabber]

My point still remains, Creative should provide specs to people that are actually willing to write a driver, and not to someone that's too busy. There was always the valid excuse for 2 years that no specs were made available, but now that he's had them for months near the beginning of the year and still no driver, is too busy really an excuse?

There's also a fine line between being too busy and being too busy to even as much talk about writing an upcoming driver.

[ivanovic]

My point still remains, Creative should provide specs to people that are actually willing to write a driver, and not to someone that's too busy. There was always the valid excuse for 2 years that no specs were made available, but now that he's had them for months near the beginning of the year and still no driver, is too busy really an excuse?

There's also a fine line between being too busy and being too busy to even as much talk about writing an upcoming driver.

To be honest, this is a simple thing:

If creative wanted the drivers, they would pay a coder to write them. When they do not pay someone to do the job, the persons are doing it mainly for fun in their free time. If creative does only hand the specs out to one person, that is creative's fault. If they are not paying him for such a driver, they can not be 100% sure that it will be out in a timid manner.

What *you* could do to improve the speed for the driver:

Offer the coder with the specs money or other benefits for completing it. That's the only way you can speed it up since lots of open source work is done by volunteers in their free time, basically just for fun or filling their own needs (like "Hey, I got this product and want to use it on linux, so let's write the driver..." and later on "Hey, I could use the drivers, maybe others can use it, too. Here it is..."). You should respect devs for the time they invest eg in alsa since it is basically their hobby and they could as well just go out and lie down in the sun.

[deanjo]

The guy who added the D1 support does not have an X-Fi, so he couldn't have helped you even if he wanted to.

Well, do you know if the "guy" has been able to reproduce the overpowering analogue gains yet on the Oxygen driver yet?

[unix_epoch]

One note: the article mentioned new codec support due to Summer of Code -- in this context, SoC refers to System on a Chip, not Summer of Code, and codec refers to an audio interface chip.

[spikestabber]

The continued commercialization behind Linux and Linux sound development will always be major roadblock to Linux on the desktop ever hoping to become a common reality.

If this is all that's happening on the ALSA front, then us desktop users may as well forget about ever having proper sound support, specs be damned.

[ivanovic]

Sorry to tell you, but I think it is *good* if companies do pay the coders to get support for their chips in faster. That is:

If they don't pay a coder for the work they know that it might take longer. If they don't pay one, it is always the "hmm, I want my card to work under linux, too, let's see what I have to do to accomplish this" situation. Until a coder is in this situation, it is likely to take ages till you get the driver. Since people do have something like a real life, too. They need to life from something. That is when they are not paid for developing the driver, the have to do some other job and just got their free time to write the drivers. And when they have no positive side effect from it, what do you think will motivate them to work on it?

It gets a lot more problematic if they don't even have the hardware to test their work on. So if creative really wanted Linux drivers for their hardware, they donated one card to the alsa devs along with the documentation.

[spikestabber]

Its not good if most ALSA development is done primarily by companies like Wolfson who want support for their products so they can be included in embedded devices other companies might want to sell. Embedded products and servers rarely ever help the normal desktop user.

It's this profit only motive that gives us crap such as binary blobs.

If everyone was like ALSA, we wouldn't have this nice stuff like the freedesktop.org push, along with compiz, AIGLX, etc.

Not everything is harmed by commercialization however, but Linux audio on the other hand is a major problem that ALSA isn't helping to solve.