Porting ALSA drivers to OSS may be easy, according to OSS ;)

[Bruno]

Hi,


I've tinkered a bit with Linux and FreeBSD, but still consider myself as 
newbie.

I'm probably going for FreeBSD since I can see the best strenghts that 
Linux experts point in their distros already exist on FreeBSD, mostly 
coherent file structure, init scripts and package management. And a great 
plus in FreeBSD is the documentation, never seen anything like that in a 
Linux distro before (Debian seems the closest to me).

I know FreeBSD is mainly conceived as a performance server OS and lacks in 
the multimedia field when compared with Linux which is much more generic.

But in terms of sound I think the scenario could change easily: you don't 
have ALSA drivers but according to this post it's possible to convert ALSA 
drivers into free OSS drivers:

http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=48#48

This could mean reduced need for commercial OSS driver support :)
And of course there may be licensing issues.

Not really my problem since I have a SB Live!, but this could easily 
improve FreeBSD image on the multimedia *NIX field :)


Thanks in advance,
Bruno