[SOLVED] Will oss work on Slackware 14.0?

igadoter · 07-15-2013, 07:09 AM

Hi,
I feel a bit of sympathy to the oss sound system. It will be good to have it installed but will it work with new Linux kernel?

guanx · 07-15-2013, 07:47 AM

Did you try "chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa-oss"?

dugan · 07-15-2013, 09:59 AM

Uhm, is the question about 14.0 (in which case the answer is obviously yes), or 14.1 (in which case see the answer above)?

guanx · 07-15-2013, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

Uhm, is the question about 14.0 (in which case the answer is obviously yes), or 14.1 (in which case see the answer above)?

My fault. Did not notice that. But how could the OP come to that question? ... completely confused.

ReaperX7 · 07-15-2013, 02:53 PM

OSS should work fine on any version of Slackware. Just make sure you disable ALSA from loading and follow the installation instructions over at SlackBuilds.org for best reference.

igadoter · 07-17-2013, 06:21 AM

Hi,
Thanks to you all for reply. Oss or alsa? Alsa is working fine out of box but I am happy to hear that oss will work too.

dugan · 07-17-2013, 11:39 AM

OSS4 from SBo, which I am the maintainer of, will work just fine with 14.0. I have not tested it with 14.1, but I see no reason it wouldn't work.

OSS3, which is part of the kernel, works out of the box with 14.0. AFAIK it needs to be enabled explicitly in 14.1 (see post #2). Note that OSS3 has the significant drawback of only being able to play one audio stream at once, while ALSA and OSS4 both do software mixing. On 14.0, I disable OSS3 by commenting out the load_oss_modules lines in rc.alsa.

I use ALSA, but that's only because I use USB soundcards exclusively, and OSS4 doesn't work with USB soundcards. OSS4 is a fine option otherwise. For one thing, it has a much nicer graphical mixer that lets you adjust the volume separately for each application.

ReaperX7 · 07-18-2013, 12:14 AM

This is taken from ArchLinux's Wiki regarding OSSv4

Quote:

Some advantages and disadvantages compared to using the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture.

OSS Advantages (users)

Per-application volume control.
Lower latency due to everything running within the Linux Kernel. Initial response time in audio applications is usually better.
OSS always has sound mixing, ALSA does not.
Sound mixing is of higher quality, due to OSS using more precise math in its sound mixing.
Some legacy cards have better support.

OSS Advantages (developers)

Support for drivers in userspace.
Cross-platform (OSS runs on BSDs and Solaris).
Cleaner and easier to use API.

ALSA advantages over OSS

Better support for USB audio devices.
Support for Bluetooth audio devices.
Support for AC'97 and HD Audio dial-up soft-modems such as Si3055.
Better support for MIDI devices.
Support for suspend.
Better support for jack detection.

Note:

OSS has experimental output support for USB audio devices, but no input.
OSS supports MIDI devices with the help of a software synthesizer such as Timidity or FluidSynth.

To be honest OSSv4 does have better audio quality and does really unlock some of the potential of your sound card.

Anonymo · 07-18-2013, 10:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReaperX7

This is taken from ArchLinux's Wiki regarding OSSv4
To be honest OSSv4 does have better audio quality and does really unlock some of the potential of your sound card.

The only reason I wasn't using it was that sound did not work on Chrome/Chromium a while back. Anyone know if this has changed?

dugan · 07-18-2013, 12:41 PM

Quote:

OSS always has sound mixing, ALSA does not.

This really isn't true.

ALSA always has sound mixing for applications that output to ALSA.

Under ALSA, applications that output to OSS and are handled by ALSA's OSS emulation layer do not get sound mixing. The way to deal with that, honestly, is to just disable ALSA's OSS emulation layer. It's disabled by default in 14.1.

Martinus2u · 07-18-2013, 02:06 PM

i'm aiming for peacuful co-existence of ALSA and OSS applications. I have found two mutually exclusive solutions: either the in-kernel oss compatibility layer, or libaoss via a wrapper script called aoss. The latter is superior in that it provides ALSA mixing capability. Unfortunately I didn't get some ancient 32 bit binaries like quake3 to work with libaoss...

igadoter · 07-19-2013, 06:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

OSS4 from SBo, which I am the maintainer of, will work just fine with 14.0.

Well I downloaded oss source tarball using the link on www.slackbuilds.org. But downloaded file has different md5sum
than that listed on www.slackbuilds.org! Can I compile this safely?
This is from www.slackbuilds.org

Code:

Homepage:
http://www.opensound.com
Source Downloads:
oss-v4.2-build2007-src-gpl.tar.bz2 (26b9d6951f3eb2eac39a0f42f0dbdae7)

Download SlackBuild:
oss.tar.gz
oss.tar.gz.asc (FAQ)

and this for downloaded file (I've followed provided link)

Code:

[C:\Documents and Settings\User\Moje dokumenty\Pobieranie\]
oss-v4.2-build2007-src-gpl.tar.bz2             f995118db1759fee3bcd38483940da6f

dugan · 07-23-2013, 10:27 PM

Okay, I just checked. The md5sum in oss.info is indeed wrong. The SlackBuild is perfectly safe to run.

I've fixed this in the update for oss4-2008, which SBo will release soon.

igadoter · 07-24-2013, 06:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dugan

I've fixed this in the update for oss4-2008, which SBo will release soon.

Thanks! I've already compiled its OK! I've got hard time though trying to set up xmms2 to work with oss.

nhOmega · 07-24-2013, 11:39 AM

What's difficult getting xmms2 to support OSS? You just need to have oss support built for it then enable it in .config/xmms2/xmms2.conf

Quote:

<section name="oss">
<property name="device">/dev/dsp</property>
<property name="mixer">/dev/mixer</property>
</section>

<section name="output">
<property name="plugin">oss</property>
</section>

Or:

Quote:

xmms2 server config output.plugin oss

Not really an issue. Have been running it with OSSv4 for years.