10 Jan
2025
10 Jan
'25
10:05 p.m.
P.S.:
Steffen Nurpmeso wrote in
<20250106215143.b3Q14AL1(a)steffen%sdaoden.eu>:
|segaloco via TUHS wrote in
| <BWYwXjScYdFHM1NV0KEtgvazEfJM1PX7WaZ8lygZ45Bw2pEQG6JQr5OCtX-KMwEwr_k2zLD\
| GXac7wymRCtifnU9VKnlsrJCrKFqGZSgM6-0=(a)protonmail.com>:
||The sound situation in the UNIX world to me has always felt particularly
||fragmentary, with OSS offering some glimmer of hope but faltering under \
||the long
||shadow of ALSA, with a hodge podge of PCM and other low level interfaces
||littered about other offerings.
|
|Oh, but *how* great it was when FreeBSD came on over with those
|"virtual sound devices", in 4.7 or 4.9 i think it was. Ie instead
|of one blocking device, one could open dev.1 and dev.2 and it was
|multiplexed in the kernel. It did some format conversion in the
|kernel alongside this.
|
|It was *fantastic*![.]
For the younger and overall clarification.
Around Y2K many programs -- audio players, but also early desktop
environment "betas" of GNOME and KDE unless my memory fools me
completely (i used such by then, at least at times, when not under
FreeBSD cons25 or Linux then framebuffer!) -- had fixed paths
built-in, for example /dev/dsp or /dev/pcm or /dev/audio or
whatever it actually was (for real). There may have been multiple
dev files, actually, ie, /dev/dsp1/2/3 etc, but the path was
built-in, and it would not multiplex: if you opened /dev/dsp1 you
had /dev/dsp1, but /dev/dsp and that thing was in use, and could
not be used for any other purpose, at all.
With the FreeBSD change program 1 could open "/dev/dsp", but
2 could open it, too, because it internally multiplexed to the
virtual .1 .2 .3 etc. This was a tremendous improvement!
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
|
|In Fall and Winter, feel "The Dropbear Bard"s pint(er).
|
|The banded bear
|without a care,
|Banged on himself for e'er and e'er
|
|Farewell, dear collar bear