.
As I understand it, the problem is that many programs require direct and exclusive access to the sound hardware in order to work. There needs to be better abstraction of the sound hardware in Linux such that it can be shared.
The Flash browser plugin is “famous” for demanding exclusive access to the sound device in order to work. And, once it has it, it does not give it up until the tab, or the browser window, is closed. Conversely, if it cannot get exclusive access, no sound.
The KDE sound system also requires exclusive access to the sound hardware, but it has a mechanism to automatically give it up when it is done.
This design problem doesn’t always manifest itself for me. That is, sometimes sound works with multiple programs. Sometimes it doesn’t. I’m not entirely sure why yet. It appears there is a sharing mechanism, but not all programs use it. I have generally observed that KDE programs such as Kaffeine and Amarok play nicely with each other for example.
I work around this as follows (Kubuntu):
1. KControl-> Sound & Multimedia -> Sound System -> Auto-suspend if idle after = 1 second
This causes the KDE sound system to release the sound device 1 second after it is no longer being used.
2. Firefox: After playing a Flash video, if another program needs to use sound, I close the tab. This frees the sound device.
3. VMWare Workstation: If it cannot get exclusive access to the sound device when a virtual machine is started, it will complain with a message box and start without it. If you resolve the problem by closing the program holding the device, you can cause VMware to take the device via its settings dialog and the VM will begin using it. However, once this is done, sound will not work in other programs unless you force VMware to give it up manually by reversing this action.
[b]Epilogue[/b]
This sucks. But, I find it an irritation that I can work around for now. This is one area where Linux needs to improve. I can look past my Linux not being perfect here. At least it never falsely accuses me of being a pirate! :^0
You might feel a little better about it knowing that while sound worked pretty well in Windows XP, it went downhill and has problems in Vista because Microsoft rewrote the sound system to “improve” it. :^0
