Because:
* OSSv4 offers no demonstrable advantages over ALSA and JACK for either low-latency performance or mixing quality
* JACK is already built on ALSA, so the move to OSSv4 would cripple a lot of important audio software
* ALSA support remains broader in applications, so a switch to OSSv4 as a default would cause other issues
* OSS does mixing in the kernel instead of in userspace, which goes against normal practice

Anyway, OSS is not some panacea for audio on Linux; it doesn't solve any of the problems people are describing.

I think the real question is, why did someone mistakenly assume it was? And that's where your "because it's new" comes in.

Just because something *seems* knowledgeable doesn't mean that it is, certainly not for something as complex as audio. I think the real proof is that no serious audio and music production apps have left ALSA.

Nothing against OSS, but right now for these very musical apps, you *really need ALSA*. The author of JACK has even gone and debunked some of what was being claimed about OSSv4.

http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2009/06/state-of-sound-in-linux-not-so-sorry.html

Check in *comments* for that story for 'dawhead' - that's the creator of JACK and Ardour. That's not to take away from the work the OSS folks are doing, but it's still ALSA in our future for the time being.

Sorry, I meant Renoise. Got my Re-'s temporarily confused. Renoise is progressing really quickly, and in the last year added JACK support. It might be worth revisiting. Now, pro or not, it is definitely a different workflow as with any tracker, so that comes down to whether you like that way of working or not, whether it fits the things you're doing.

Heheh, well, in fairness, I'm dealing with some odd FreeBSD + Apache issues and moving the whole thing over to a better-tested Linux + nginx + FPM setup, so our server wasn't running so well to begin with. This has certainly encouraged me to get that process moving faster. ;)

I definitely hear your thoughts. I won't argue that you have the same range of choice on Linux; clearly, it's behind. I think the reason you'd run under WINE is people aren't running into the crud of Windows, they can use whatever hardware they want, and with the right configuration and hardware setup, you can get exceptional low-latency audio performance, even over a cheap USB interface that might not do as well as on Windows, and on a free operating system over which you have greater control. That's not to say *everyone* will want to do that, but that's definitely the answer to "why" you might!

Using VSTs in WINE turns out to be very, very easy - that's again the reason why people would consider this solution, and why the MUSE Receptor works.

I'm not sure why Reaper isn't a "pro" tracker. It seems to me to be a very effective combination of more modern DAW-style features with tracker editing, and it has native JACK support.

Now, don't get me wrong. If you've got your software running happily on Windows or Mac, and then you look at some additional configuration work on Linux *and* giving up some software, I can see why that wouldn't immediately appeal. But that's part of why I ran this story on Kim - you know, ultimately he's not using a whole lot of tools, but he found just the right set of tools that he needed for his job, and got everything else out of the way.

I think if the community could attack some of the problems you're describing -- even better documenting it -- that kind of scenario could apply to a widening circle of people.

I'm the editor of CDM and also run our servers. (apparently not terribly well, though I am in the middle of a migration to a new server config -- should've, uh, waited on this story!)

I'd like to get more data on hardware, too, and I'm curious what's been giving you trouble. I regularly see various problems on all three platforms, though I agree Linux is probably the least familiar and needs information dissemination most urgently (at least for music production).

While I'm waiting and restarting Apache (cough), some of the things folks are claiming here seem to be misinformed. That's not necessarily their fault; it illustrates that better documentation is needed, and simply pointing people to audio-centric distros I think is not enough.

For driver support -- RME fills the pro audio gap nicely if you're looking at the high end; they're the ones that are really doing it right. You'll also have good luck with any class-compliant USB audio interface. I'm getting good results out of a Cakewalk SPS-25 (basically equivalent to an Edirol UA-25). FireWire support is greatly improved, and you can check there at ffado.org. Most internal chipsets are also well-supported by ALSA - not a high-end option, true, but it means you can mix something on the road listening to the headphone jack without having to muck about with something like ASIO4ALL on PC.

Software: it's true there isn't much in the way of Linux-*only* software, but not that you don't have choices. Renoise and energyXT now both run natively, Renoise being a huge deal to fans of trackers. And many Windows apps can run better under WINE, with ALSA, WINEASIO, and JACK, than they do on Windows. That's the reason Native Instruments software can run on the MUSE Receptor, specialized hardware that runs Linux and WINE under the hood. It's solid enough that it winds up being preferable for people to buy that hardware over a laptop - yes, even over a Mac laptop. You probably won't get that kind of reliability out of a Linux setup out of the box, really, regardless of distro. But if you can set it up in a way that will be rock-solid, that could be worth the time for people.

I think that's the bottom line: a lot of people would be happy to invest a little extra time and effort to get an open system running. The problem is, they don't know how. The responses here demonstrate that people aren't aware of what some of their choices are, or have had (understandable) frustration because the distros ship out-of-box in a way that doesn't quite work, and there's not much clear documentation to tell you how to fix it.

ALSA isn't perfect, but neither is Core Audio, let alone ASIO. ALSA combined with JACK can be an exceptionally-terrific audio system for these applications.

So, I can make you a deal - I will put more of that information online, *and* fix our servers, too, so you can actually read it. ;)