I read:
some time ago I read that the next Linux kernel (current is 2.4.x) will originally include the latest ALSA driver as the generic sound driver (maybe
this is the case yes,
OSS will be abandonned)
probably not, and the alsa-oss emulation layer is definitely to stay around for some more time
do you know when this kernel (2.5) is released ? I could not find any information about this
2.5 is the development tree, I'm currently running 2.6.0-test9 to evaluate it.
I'm very interested in this new kernel, because currently the most recent Hammerfall sound cards (like mine) are not directly compatible with the ALSA driver anymore (hdsploader problem, related to the RME Hammerfall PCI hardware
I don't think that alsa in the kernel is fresher than alsa-cvs so upgrading your kernel might not help you with that.
I saw there are new versions of the ALSA driver too, but I haven't tested them
you should probably just try alsa 0.9.8 or 1.0.0pre1, if tat doesn't help get the cvs version and ask on the alsa-user mailing list, these guys are usually pretty quick in providing fixes.
regards,
x