From owner-freebsd-current Fri Dec 10 22:18:14 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (zippy.cdrom.com [204.216.27.228]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 75C2414F7D; Fri, 10 Dec 1999 22:18:12 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zippy.cdrom.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA02440; Fri, 10 Dec 1999 22:18:24 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) To: Soren Schmidt Cc: julian@whistle.com (Julian Elischer), phk@FreeBSD.ORG (Poul-Henning Kamp), current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Audio support [was Re: HEADSUP: wd driver will be retired!] In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 08 Dec 1999 18:21:56 +0100." <199912081721.SAA70567@freebsd.dk> Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 22:18:24 -0800 Message-ID: <2436.944893104@zippy.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > The same thing is about to apply to the woxware sound code, we have a > new shiny system that works and is much better designed... Actually, I'm sad to say that our shiny new sound system does *not* work for some of the most popular audio chipsets on the market today (where the older "luigi" sound system did support them) and this is a matter of significant concern to some folks, myself included. We're getting a larger population of people who expect FreeBSD to simply continue to work from release to release, and this is not an unreasonable expectation when you think about it. Unfortunately, when we remove support for a piece of hardware which was formerly supported (the aic driver being a good example) and this particular hardware happens to be in those people's machines, well, it's easy to see where "continuing to work" is no longer a claim we can make for FreeBSD's progress in such cases. When this is also for some really old and grotty piece of hardware, like floppy tape drives, and nobody is interested in actively maintaining the driver for it, then that's a reasonably justifable argument for taking that kind of public relations trade-off. When the hardware in question is something that's currently being sold on the open market and is still quite popular, like the SB16 PCI or Vibra16X on-board audio chipset, then killing off support for it is quite another thing. Both of those device currently refuse to work in any of my -current test boxes and perhaps you should have chosen a better example in making your argument. :-) - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message