Fedora Rant #7 - who told KDE Sound to stop me listening?

[Timothy Murphy]

I'm running KDE-3.5.6 under Fedora-6 with kernel 2.6.20-1.2933.fc6,
on a ThinkPad T43 with Intel AC'97 Audio Controller (ICH6 Family),
and I can hear nothing - sound is turned off.

However, if I go to Control Centre=>Sound & Multimedia=>Sound System
and click on Test Sound I hear the sound perfectly -
but that is the only place I can hear anything.

If I go to F (K Menu)=>Administration=>Soundcard Detection
I hear nothing when I press the "Test sound" button,
although the correct Model and Module are chosen.

The log file says
"aplay: main:545: audio open error: Device or resource busy".

I am baffled by this; I could understand if sound never worked,
but why does it only work when tested in the Control Centre?

I see that I am told in the Control Centre sound module,
"The KDE sound system takes exclusive control
over your audio hardware,
blocking programs that may wish to use it directly."

Is this the cause of my problem?
If so, who asked KDE sound to take exclusive control?
Can I tell it, "Thank you but no thanks"?



-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland