Some time ago, I installed Debian on my mothers new laptop (which worked fine once the Xorg drivers supported PCI Express and I did a Bios update).

Since my Laptop is currently being repaired, I’m using hers now (she works 95% of the time on her Desktop anyway). And I noticed a couple of odnesses:

Package: libsdl1.2debian
Depends: libsdl1.2debian-oss (= 1.2.9-0.1) | libsdl1.2debian-all (= 1.2.9-0.1)
| libsdl1.2debian-esd (= 1.2.9-0.1) | libsdl1.2debian-arts (= 1.2.9-0.1)
| libsdl1.2debian-alsa (= 1.2.9-0.1) | libsdl1.2debian-nas (= 1.2.9-0.1)

This makes SDL install OSS support by default, not alsa. IMHO we should now make alsa support default. Maybe even some dmix configuration, since that is what most users will need.

Similarly, lots of stuff depends on libesd0, which is the OSS library. Or to be precise, they all depend on “libesd0 | libesd0-alsa”, tons of packages. Each single one preferring to install the OSS version instead of the ALSA version. :-(

Is it just me thinking that OSS is deprecated, while ALSA works like a charm and can do much more than OSS? Sure, you can use ALSA via it’s OSS emulation, but then you lose e.g. the ability to use dmix.