Micro$will's Journal: ALSA is ass

I decided to upgrade my main workstation running Fedora Core 1 to kernel 2.6.2 some time ago. After going through gconfig and learning kernel configuring all over again, I see that OSS is "depreciated" and that I should use ALSA. I've heard of it before, so I assumed it was mature. HA!

I leave out all reverences to OSS in favor of a straight up ALSA setup. Big mistake. All the init scripts in Fedora reference the old modules, and even after changing them to the new ones, and editing modules.conf, I still get strange errors looking for sound-x-x. So it works now, right? Nope.

All the correct modules are loaded, XMMS recompiled, and still no sound. Probably the mixer. Tried to run it in the GUI, but that won't work with ALSA. Aumix is dead too, so I search around for an ALSA compatible mixer. I find the most retarded unintuative buggy apps ever. Example: Master Volume? Sure, it's there, but it doesn't do anything. You have to horizontally scroll through the 20 or so broken sliders until you reach something-pcm-0 or some crap. I suffer with it for about a week, then recompile without ALSA and with OSS. So much for progress.