Re: [Alsa-user] How to use Surroundsound with alsa??

[Sergei S. <ste...@li...>]

On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 13:15:36 -0500
Lee Revell <rlr...@jo...> wrote:

> On Sat, 2006-04-01 at 20:57 +0300, Sergei Steshenko wrote:
> > Humans (end users) are supposed to answer this question by looking at
> > the output of some Linux utilities.
> > 
> 
> The distro's init scripts/modutils/hotplug/udev configuration is
> supposed to make sure that this is not possible.  Users who don't use a
> distro or compile everything from source are expected to know what they
> are doing. 
> 
> Anyway this is rarely a problem, it's just to make sure.
> 
> > Can't ALSA programs look at the output of the same utilities (by
> > invoking
> > them) and tell users that their ALSA attempts are senseless in the
> > presence
> > of OSS ? 
> 
> This would be bloat.  The UNIX philosophy is not to prevent users from
> doing stupid things as this would also prevent them from doing clever
> things.
> 
> Lee
> 
> 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language
> that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast
> and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory!
> http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642
> _______________________________________________
> Alsa-user mailing list
> Als...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
> 


To add '-perform_sanity_checks' command line switch not preventing
users from doing both stupid and smart things would be against UNIX
philosophy and bloat ?

It is not obvious to new users that both ALSA and OSS exist; Linux
distros sometimes use OSS driver instead of ALSA one, so end user might
miss this.

I think your post is just another argument in favor of UNIX/Linux haters
proving their point of inherent UNIX/Linux user unfriendliness (it's not
that Windows OS inherently/always user-friendly, but Linux/UNIX should
be better than Windows, and it's a separate issue).