Tag Archives: Linux

Getting kernel support

[This is a slight modification of something I posted to the alsa-devel list earlier today.]
One of the biggest surprises that people starting to use Linux seem to run into is that you can’t rely on any particular support level from the community - everything is done on a voluntary basis and the responses will depend [...]

If we build it they will come

It looks like the jack reporting API for ALSA which just got merged into the mainline kernel for inclusion in 2.6.28 already has its first user - code from Matthew Ranostay supporting the jack detection in Sigmatel HDA codecs was just queued for merge in the next merge window. Admittedly, the jack reporting API has [...]

What’s the standard Linux audio API?

Lennart Pottering’s post about the sound APIs available for Linux appears to have caused some consternation from people working with the modern out of tree OSS drivers who feel that the current, out of tree, OSS drivers are being unfairly maligned. This rather misses the point of his post. The fact that there are improved [...]

The Linux kernel needs a case sensitive filesystem

The Linux kernel source relies on a case sensitive filesystem. If you attempt to get the sources via git this will manifest as an error along the lines of:
fatal: Entry ‘include/linux/netfilter/xt_CONNMARK.h
There are several header files like this the names of which differ only in case and just can’t be represented on a filesystem that doesn’t [...]

Release day churn

The 2.6.27 pull request for ALSA was something of a surprise to read - a large proportion of the changes in there are for ASoC. Not what I was expecting given how many ASoC changes there are still to be merged, but it’s nice to see, especially given the general problems with embedded users contributing [...]

Who’s in charge?

Apparently the use of the terms describing free software as organic or non-organic depending on the extent to which the piece of software concerned is controlled or driven by a single company wound a few people up, partly due to the strong value judgements that the terms tend to imply. The terms I found myself [...]

ARM Linux git tree

It’s surprisingly poorly advertised but there is an ARM Linux git tree available from http://ftp.arm.linux.org.uk/pub/armlinux/kernel/git-cur/ and ftp://ftp.arm.linux.org.uk/pub/armlinux/kernel/git-cur/ with currently accepted patches queued up in it. Very handy, especially for offline use.

It’s just not Kansas

One of the biggest “we’re not in Kansas any more” monents I’ve had with Rails was during a discussion of a conference that a lot of people had been to recently. While we were talking about how the important part of conferences is normally nothing to do with the official schedule I mentioned a story [...]

I was going to say

I had been going to write something about the rather good Linux support in my new laptop. Turns out there’s no need. I have great timing sometimes.