Which Linux Plays Best With OSS?

[SedaliaSteve]

Several years ago I put together a Shuttle system as a music server. I installed the Ubuntu alternative Desktop to set it up since that supported my RAID 1.

I struggled and struggled to get my 82801I ICH9 HD Audio working. That was a major reason for this. I was almost ready to give up and install Windoze when I found OSS. It worked perfectly. I scrubbed every bit of pulseaudio and put OSS in and I had wonderful digital audio. I ended up running optical SPDIF to a DAC with my stereo and it was an enormous jukebox of good sound with FLAC's I used Songbird for this. I also set up a sort of mirror of MP3's of this so the other maqchines in the house could use it.

I started at Hardy and upgraded to Jaunty and left it there. The other day I looked at the Alsa page and read it wrong. I saw ICH7 support and forot mine was ICH9. I installed the latest Ubuntu and found OSS is deprecated and not supported. Pulseaudio is so heavily into it you risk having a dumb terminal system by messing with it. The Ubuntu boards are full of people like me tweeking away and generally not getting it to work.

In short, what current Linux supports OSS and is a favorite here? I've stuck an extra hard drive on my computer and am backing up everything. My choice is to roll back to the Ubuntu past with an old version, wait until Alsa & Canonical get this or switch to a different Linux. I miss my sound and would prefer to switch and use a current Linux.

Steve

[igorzwx]

Several years ago I put together a Shuttle system as a music server. I installed the Ubuntu alternative Desktop to set it up since that supported my RAID 1.

I struggled and struggled to get my 82801I ICH9 HD Audio working. That was a major reason for this. I was almost ready to give up and install Windoze when I found OSS. It worked perfectly. I scrubbed every bit of pulseaudio and put OSS in and I had wonderful digital audio. I ended up running optical SPDIF to a DAC with my stereo and it was an enormous jukebox of good sound with FLAC's I used Songbird for this. I also set up a sort of mirror of MP3's of this so the other maqchines in the house could use it.

I started at Hardy and upgraded to Jaunty and left it there. The other day I looked at the Alsa page and read it wrong. I saw ICH7 support and forot mine was ICH9. I installed the latest Ubuntu and found OSS is deprecated and not supported. Pulseaudio is so heavily into it you risk having a dumb terminal system by messing with it. The Ubuntu boards are full of people like me tweeking away and generally not getting it to work.

In short, what current Linux supports OSS and is a favorite here? I've stuck an extra hard drive on my computer and am backing up everything. My choice is to roll back to the Ubuntu past with an old version, wait until Alsa & Canonical get this or switch to a different Linux. I miss my sound and would prefer to switch and use a current Linux.

Steve

You may try "Easy Linux" with OSS4 on a LiveCD
http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewto ... 711#p16711

To improve sound quality with OSS4 you may try to enable "Production quality".
There is also the Russian "exact scientific resampler", standalone and plugin for the Russian Ultimate Player (deabeef).

[danto]

i think that any linux 2.6.* would work
if you're asking for which distro i think that everyone should play good, despite of that I think I read something regarding to arch live somewhere

(i can't getting working in a debian testing atm, if that helps)

[igorzwx]

i think that any linux 2.6.* would work
if you're asking for which distro i think that everyone should play good, despite of that I think I read something regarding to arch live somewhere

(i can't getting working in a debian testing atm, if that helps)

The old version of Linux kernel is not likely to perform well with the current version of OSS4.
I have already tried Ubuntu 8.04 with OSS4 and Intel HDA ICH7. The quality of recordings is so bad that you cannot even use Skype.

[SedaliaSteve]

Arch is looking better all the time. I'm backing up all my data to prepare for this.

Steve

[igorzwx]

Arch is looking better all the time. I'm backing up all my data to prepare for this.

Steve

This manual was very helpful for me:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide
It is always useful. It is a basic manual in the form of installation guide.

You may also want to read this:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3543&start=30#p15703
and this:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3543&start=30#p15711

[cesium]

Well, I'm happy with using OSS with debian/unstable (debian doesn't presume gnome/Pulse so heavily), but Arch is fine too...