This package contains a program loader, aoss, which wraps applications written for OSS in a compatibility library, thus allowing them to work with ALSA.

There are two ways of getting an application to work with ALSA if the application was written for OSS. The first way is to load the special ALSA drivers that emulate the OSS kernel interface; these allow the application to open /dev/dsp0 and other OSS device files. The second way is to wrap the application in the libaoss library provided in this package; the wrapper causes the application to access native ALSA device files such as /dev/snd/pcmC0D0c instead of OSS device files.

Use of the alsa-oss library is recommended over the use of OSS-emulation drivers if you want to use ALSA's PCM plugin layer.

ALSA is the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture.

OSS is the free version of the Open Sound System.