That’s not a feature thats exclusive to open source though. Circular reasoning like this just distracts from the fact that software just like hardware is constantly evolving, even in personal spaces. Thinking someone can do better has no relevance on the “open source” aspect or the political leaning.
OSS and ALSA are kernel audio drivers, they’re the most powerful of them all but extremely low level. Everything else, like pulseaudio/pipewire are just higher-level interfaces that feed ALSA audio.
Real talk, though: why has Linux taken at least five tries (OSS, ALSA, JACK, PulseAudio, PipeWire) to get audio right?!
That’s the thing about open source. Someone always thinks they can do better
Relevant
That’s not a feature thats exclusive to open source though. Circular reasoning like this just distracts from the fact that software just like hardware is constantly evolving, even in personal spaces. Thinking someone can do better has no relevance on the “open source” aspect or the political leaning.
You mean someone thinks they need to do better not by enhancement but by complete replacement. See: Systemd and its own flailing.
SystemD knows what it has to do.
everything
They don’t have the same goals.
JACK is for professional audio.
OSS and ALSA are kernel audio drivers, they’re the most powerful of them all but extremely low level. Everything else, like pulseaudio/pipewire are just higher-level interfaces that feed ALSA audio.
Pulseaudio and pipewire are sound servers.
So really it only took two tries:
OSS -> ALSA
Pulseaudio -> Pipewire