I remember when ALSA was the successor to OSS. But there were also others I can't name. JACK too, but I think that's still in use for professional sound production (not sure why anyone would use Linux for that). Then came PulseAudio which was The Future 2, which had a bunch of incompatibilities with existing programs that either caused latency or an absence of audio. But it got better over time. What was it, a little over a decade since PulseAudio got fully rolled out?
Now there's yet another project called PipeWire.
Frankly, this is one big reason I ditched Linux. The illusion of "choice" is more like a bunch of people just one-upping each other for the sake of it. I've seen it time and again with things like the FFMpeg vs Libav debacle, the various spinoffs of GIMP that didn't pan out, most desktop environments, and so on. Actually, at least there's sort of a better argument for infinite DEs, but I don't see audio needs being all that different between various users.