Very early in Mstation's days we interviewed Jaroslav Kysela about

the ALSA project. This project set out to upgrade the existing free

kernel sound drivers in significant ways to match up with modern

soundcards and modern ways of working with sound. Since we last

spoke a lot of work has been done. The drivers are now reasonably

easy to install and the number of cards supported has expanded

dramatically. Back then there were no high-end cards supported and

now there are a few.

ALSA is quite widely used now I think. Do you have any numbers

for users at all?

It is difficult to determine real numbers of users. We have more than

ten thousand downloads per months from the main site. I am very glad that

a major part of the Linux community knows about ALSA at this time.

When we last talked the main thing coming up was integrating

ALSA with the 2.3 kernel. There have been a few twists and turns

in the meantime but how is that job going now?

Right, because we were not sure about the API and the situation for the kernel

integration was not so good at 2.3 time, we postponed our goal.

Unfortunately, although all sound related developers agreed on ALSA

integration into 2.5, the process is not as fast as we wish. Linus is busy

with the new block I/O layer, so we have to wait awhile again.

Has that process been a consultative one or do the ALSA

project coders mainly have to react to changes?

We accept reactions from kernel developers to improve and integrate our

code into the main Linux tree. It is bi-directional talk. Unfortunately,

due to lack of time for responding kernel developers, the communication is

spare right now. The fact they are not able to verify our APIs at the

moment worries me a bit.

The ALSA soundcard matrix is looking very impressive these days with

quite a few reasonably high-end cards on it. Did you have to persuade

most of them that Linux drivers were a good thing or did they come

looking for you?

I must admit, that manufacturers for all supported high-end cards are

very helpful in the sense of hardware availability and documentation. On

the other hand, some other manufacturers still deny the open source world

from being happy with commercial platforms. I think that there is only one way

to change this situation - users should buy only "open source" hardware

for their Linux machines and then when the user base is large enough,

I am sure that hardware vendors will change their thinking.

What points would you make in trying to persuade card maker/marketers

to release their specs so that Linux drivers can be made?

We have very nice document available at

http://www.alsa-project.org/call.html which explains reasons for hardware

vendors to support open source software.

Is there anything major coming up for ALSA in terms of features and

applications?

Right now we do not expect more rapid changes in our driver / library

framework. We are happy, and we offer quite stable drivers for audio and

music hardware. Also, the presence of projects like JACK or LADSPA - which

simplifies the development of applications working with digital audio and

allows easier interoperability among different pieces of code, creates a

good starting point for many good sound applications.

Our goal is to finish the documentation for application developers and

improve ALSA library to let some parts be more tuneable. Also, the support

for wave-table hardware is not finished. And, in our minds are projects

like the sharing of exclusive devices (mainly for digital-audio) and so on.

Thanks Jaroslav.


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	Very early in Mstation's days we interviewed Jaroslav Kysela about the ALSA project. This project set out to upgrade the existing free kernel sound drivers in significant ways to match up with modern soundcards and modern ways of working with sound. Since we last spoke a lot of work has been done. The drivers are now reasonably easy to install and the number of cards supported has expanded dramatically. Back then there were no high-end cards supported and now there are a few. ALSA is quite widely used now I think. Do you have any numbers for users at all? It is difficult to determine real numbers of users. We have more than ten thousand downloads per months from the main site. I am very glad that a major part of the Linux community knows about ALSA at this time. When we last talked the main thing coming up was integrating ALSA with the 2.3 kernel. There have been a few twists and turns in the meantime but how is that job going now? Right, because we were not sure about the API and the situation for the kernel integration was not so good at 2.3 time, we postponed our goal. Unfortunately, although all sound related developers agreed on ALSA integration into 2.5, the process is not as fast as we wish. Linus is busy with the new block I/O layer, so we have to wait awhile again. Has that process been a consultative one or do the ALSA project coders mainly have to react to changes? We accept reactions from kernel developers to improve and integrate our code into the main Linux tree. It is bi-directional talk. Unfortunately, due to lack of time for responding kernel developers, the communication is spare right now. The fact they are not able to verify our APIs at the moment worries me a bit. The ALSA soundcard matrix is looking very impressive these days with quite a few reasonably high-end cards on it. Did you have to persuade most of them that Linux drivers were a good thing or did they come looking for you? I must admit, that manufacturers for all supported high-end cards are very helpful in the sense of hardware availability and documentation. On the other hand, some other manufacturers still deny the open source world from being happy with commercial platforms. I think that there is only one way to change this situation - users should buy only "open source" hardware for their Linux machines and then when the user base is large enough, I am sure that hardware vendors will change their thinking. What points would you make in trying to persuade card maker/marketers to release their specs so that Linux drivers can be made? We have very nice document available at http://www.alsa-project.org/call.html which explains reasons for hardware vendors to support open source software. Is there anything major coming up for ALSA in terms of features and applications? Right now we do not expect more rapid changes in our driver / library framework. We are happy, and we offer quite stable drivers for audio and music hardware. Also, the presence of projects like JACK or LADSPA - which simplifies the development of applications working with digital audio and allows easier interoperability among different pieces of code, creates a good starting point for many good sound applications. Our goal is to finish the documentation for application developers and improve ALSA library to let some parts be more tuneable. Also, the support for wave-table hardware is not finished. And, in our minds are projects like the sharing of exclusive devices (mainly for digital-audio) and so on. Thanks Jaroslav.