Pulse OSS support broken?

TarrasQ · #1 30th May 2009, 10:41 PM

Hi

A week or two ago I noticed that none of my games that use OSS had sound anymore. /dev/dsp isn't found... Also when I start some games, pulseaudio process goes wild and grabs 30% of my CPU time, while 70% is allocated to the game - even if I have sound disabled in the games.

Quick searching in the web and this forum didn't give me any hints that anyone else had this trouble. Still, I don't think I had installed/uninstalled any audio related packages. I've checked my package listing twice and didn't see anything clearly wrong there.

Does anyone else have this problem or any advice or info?

Cheers,
T

sideways · #2 31st May 2009, 12:30 AM

From http://fedoraldc.wordpress.com/2009/...-of-fedora-11/

Quote:

Other Unixes, such as FreeBSD and OpenSolaris are still stuck with OSS (Open Sound System) audio. In F11 we finally switched OSS off by default (though you can still reenable it via some minor hackery). OSS was the predecessor of ALSA. Thankfully it is now fully obsolete on Linux. OSS is mostly a design from the early nineties. It has received only minor updating since then. It is no way comparable to what we now have on Linux or even what MacOS or Windows provide. (Although is has some very vocal fans which like to write me hate mails because I say things like this)

helloworld1 · #3 31st May 2009, 02:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sideways

From http://fedoraldc.wordpress.com/2009/...-of-fedora-11/

Try padsp like this:
$padsp program-name

scottro · #4 31st May 2009, 03:09 AM

Sounds rather tongue in cheek--I suppose the author has some BSD using friends and was simply jealous of how well sound works for them, regardless of whether or not they use X, different X desktops, etc.

Although, in fairness, the same was true of Fedora till they broke sound in Nov 2007.
Works like a charm in CentOS.

sideways · #5 31st May 2009, 09:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scottro

Sounds rather tongue in cheek--I suppose the author has some BSD using friends and was simply jealous of how well sound works for them, regardless of whether or not they use X, different X desktops, etc.

Although, in fairness, the same was true of Fedora till they broke sound in Nov 2007.
Works like a charm in CentOS.

The "author" is Lennart Poettering, full-time paid employee of Redhat, he is very serious

scottro · #6 31st May 2009, 12:44 PM

Ah, well, if you're going to be condescending, you should be sure that what you have works better than what you're degrading. In this case, it doesn't.

RahulSundaram · #7 31st May 2009, 01:40 PM

Hi,

OSS in Linux is obsolete. OSS in BSD* is not and not even the same software anymore.

scottro · #8 31st May 2009, 02:24 PM

There actually seems to be a new flavor of OSS for Linux. ArchLinux has it as an option, and it works well for me.

(And Fedora has, I believe, some relatively new alsa-oss libraries.)

DISCLAIMER: My use of audio is quite simple, occasional music and movies. From what I pick up here and there, for those who make sophisticated use of audio, pulse is already showing itself, at least according to some, to be a serious contender.

RahulSundaram · #9 31st May 2009, 02:29 PM

The new version of OSS is not in the upstream kernel and won't be in Fedora until it does if that ever happens. So that's isn't relevant for Fedora at this point. PulseAudio isn't quite in the same level. It is not a direct comparison.

TarrasQ · #10 31st May 2009, 08:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by helloworld1

Try padsp like this:
$padsp program-name

ERROR: ld.so: object 'libpulsedsp.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.

open /dev/[sound/]dsp: No such file or directory

This means it the library should be included in some package. It seems this is a 32-to64-bit compatibility issue. http://pulseaudio.org/ticket/220

helloworld1 · #11 1st June 2009, 04:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TarrasQ

ERROR: ld.so: object 'libpulsedsp.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.

open /dev/[sound/]dsp: No such file or directory

This means it the library should be included in some package. It seems this is a 32-to64-bit compatibility issue. http://pulseaudio.org/ticket/220

#yum install libpulsedsp.so

sonoran · #12 1st June 2009, 05:49 AM

My only interest here is the best sound quality. The default Fedora 11 sound system produces pops and crackles - that is not acceptable (despite the wonderful-sounding "glitch-free" logic referred to by Lennart Poettering - if only his audio code was as good as his PR/marketing talent).

Following the Arch Linux Wiki page on OSSv4, I installed their system on Fedora 11 and the audio quality is perfect.

I really don't care about the upstream kernel arguments, the userspace/kernelspace debates, or how much Red Hat is paying someone to produce lousy sound on my computer. OSSv4 works, Pulse Audio doesn't work.

scottro · #13 1st June 2009, 06:36 AM

Yuppers.
Lots of people agree. Apparently Ubuntu folks as well--there were a number on Crunchbang forums quite happy that it wasn't included.

The upstream stuff really doesn't make sense to me. Upstream firefox doesn't force installation of 60 odd language packs, some of which have been known to have vulnerabilities in the past, but that doesn't stop Fedora.

Funny, today I saw several articles of outrage (though not on these forums) when MS added some firefox extension without giving the user a choice. At least, that one can be removed with a registry edit.

RahulSundaram · #14 1st June 2009, 07:01 AM

[QUOTE=sonoran;1219750]My only interest here is the best sound quality. The default Fedora 11 sound system produces pops and crackles - that is not acceptable (despite the wonderful-sounding "glitch-free" logic referred to by Lennart Poettering - if only his audio code was as good as his PR/marketing talent).

/QUOTE]

Glitch free refers specifically to a implementation detail that saves power. If you have issues, make sure you have all the updates and file bug reports

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_file_a_bug_report

RahulSundaram · #15 1st June 2009, 07:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by scottro

The upstream stuff really doesn't make sense to me. Upstream firefox doesn't force installation of 60 odd language packs, some of which have been known to have vulnerabilities in the past, but that doesn't stop Fedora.

Funny, today I saw several articles of outrage (though not on these forums) when MS added some firefox extension without giving the user a choice. At least, that one can be removed with a registry edit.

As I have already explained to you, Add-ons are merely a reflection of the way it is packaged and can be removed as root user. Intrusive kernel patches are quite a different thing. These often lag behind the latest upstream kernel releases and whenever Fedora has to push a new kernel release an an update, third party patches will break. This is not a better experience. I understand some people have issues with the current implementation but piling more kernel patches aren't going to help that. Instead provide feedback by filing bug reports.