What's the difference between OSS and ALSA?

[Xueqian Zhao <xueqianz@xxxxxxx>]

Is it possible that only either can be supported by the audio firmware?

I've succeeded installing the debian testing on my new Dell studio14z laptop. However, there are quite a lot problems in my audio driver

At the beginning, before installing any audio driver, there was only beep, but boot with 2.6.26, the beep was soft; while boot with 2.6.30 and 2.6.32, the beep is very sharp and loud.

Then, as usual, I chose all ALSA packages, but it did not work, no sound but sharp beep. So I had to install OSS4 as a try, then it worked. Weird! 

Does it mean that my audio chip only supports OSS?

My audio controller is nvidia MCP79 that the motherboard chips are all nvidia's mcp79. 

Currently, I can listen music via xmms2 and watch movie using totem and mplayer. But when I watch videos in youtube, no sound comes from firefox(adobe flashplayer 10 installed). 

After I googled and then edited the /etc/firefox/firefoxrc, it did not help!!

The last thing is that after the earphone is plugged in, the speaker is still on!!! I don't know why  or how to handle it. I tried ossxmixer but there are too many channels and options.

who can help me?

thanks

--
Best regards,
Xueqian Zhao

Electrical & Computer Engineering Department
Michigan Technological University
Houghton, MI 49931, USA
Email: xueqianz@xxxxxxx
Mailbox: 121 EERC, Michigan Tech U, 1400 Townsend St., Houghton, MI 49931