So I take it that other (non-Squeak) Linux applications also generally crash when trying to play sounds with a typical (non-NAS) sound driver setup? (or whatever setup causes Squeak to crash) Or is this just a Squeak thing?
I'm just wondering if there's any way that Squeak could at least fail silently rather than crash in this situation. It seems a bit ridiculous that it's this easy for a newbie to crash Squeak on Linux.
- Doug Way dway@riskmetrics.com
Lex Spoon wrote:
This is a stupid part of most Linux sound drivers -- only one program can connect at a time. Worse, some sound cards *block* when you try to open them a second time. I'd love to know how to tell the open to just give up, if there is another process using it.... but not all sound drivers allow this.
Anyway, you can solve this problem by using the Network Audio System (NAS). Does SuSe have a package for this? The way it works is that a "sound server" is the only guy talking directly to the sound device; other apps talk to the saund server. Squeak has patches for NAS on my Squeak site:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~lex/squeakTo deal with other programs that don't support NAS, you can use "audiooss" -- if SuSe doesn't have it, you can do a web search for it. (Probably only Debian has this in it....)
-Lex