> How could you imagine a "Multi user" audio layer integrated > into the OS ? audio is not like any other server tasks, you > usually have to access the hardware directly by plug in > your mic, your midi gear etc... and you usually have to be > near the computer in order to listen to the music you are > playing... etc so what is really the need to give Linux an > audio Multiuser OS ? Imagine 2 or more users using the same > computer to make music, listen to their video etc and using > the ability from Linux to mix all the stuff, it would be a > genious inaudible "cacophony" at the sound card output :) Hehe. I also had these thoughts, but I'd like to give two examples: * First one: Currently, the audio devices get ownership of the first user logged in via PAM or a simillar mechanism. Unfortunately, my girl friend wants to surf the internet. So I open a second X session. Now she will not get sound because the user of the first session uses the audio device. Furthermore, I formyself use a second user to make the videos (to have a clean desktop and to set everything to english). So it can happen that I have three X sessions open, and I'd really like to see that all three users can have sound. * Second one: This case is somehow theoretic, but we have also users on our machines which are not neccessaryly physical users. In the future may be a shell script running as a system user wants to inform me via audio that someone tries to log in from an unknown host, maybe rendering a text through embrola or playing a prepared audio file. So, wouldn't something as a jackd running in root mode and accepting audio from any user who is in the jack group be a really desireable thing? > Hope I'm wrong and I don't understand the mean of this > thread :) No, you did understand it and thanks for your thouhts :) . Best regards ce