[Swfdec] Resurrect OSS support for non-ALSA operating systems

[Chris Wareham]

Eric Anholt said on 17/10/08 18:06:
> On Fri, 2008-10-17 at 12:59 +0200, Benjamin Otte wrote:
>> 3) Revive the OSS backend.
> 
> Ugh.  Agreed with Benjamin here that this is the worst option.
> Especially if you're building a desktop system and your sound should be
> going through PA in the end anyway, which means using padsp for the
> massive loss.
> 

I may be wrong, but I recall the main argument for inclusion of ALSA in
Linux was that the version of OSS it replaced couldn't multiplex audio,
or could only do so on one particular cards hardware mixer. This is now
a moot point on the BSD's (Free and Net at least), as they support
software audio mixing much like the recently re-open sourced OSS. Again,
I may be way off base here, but I've always assumed that things like ESD
and Pulse were a workaround for no in-kernel audio mixing for Linux.

Chris