Hi, I've been trying to get rid of the arts server. In order to run the ALSA-agnostic skype (closed 32-bit binary), I created the following wrapper script, which I named 'osswrap': # File ~/osswrap export LD_PRELOAD=$LD_PRELOAD:/usr/lib/libaoss.so exec $@ [ NOTE: The second command is VERY important. If I include the first line in, say, '/etc/profile.local', the shells do weird things, as if the $LD-PRELOAD variable takes control of everything. I am speaking from memory here. So, I decided to go with the script. The 'exec' command basically starts a new shell with the new $LD_PRELOAD.] I try to invoke skype with './osswrap skype'. It almost runs --almost, but not quite. For a couple of seconds the sound is fine but then it goes quiet and I get the following errors: volume_adjust: SOUND_MIXER_WRITE_IGAIN failed: Invalid argument read error, res = -1 , handle = 39 read error, res = -1 , handle = 48 I run all this on a Compaq Presario R3240 laptop (AMD64-based, of course), with an nVidia chipset and nVidia graphics card (the latter is probably irrelevant here). My ~/.asoundrc file is as follows: pcm.dsp0 { type plug slave.pcm "dmix" } pcm.dsp { type plug slave.pcm "dmix" } pcm.dsp-1 { type plug slave.pcm "dmix" } pcm.dsp1 { type plug slave.pcm "dmix" } pcm.dsp2 { type plug slave.pcm "dmix" } ctl.mixer0 { type hw card 0 } (I know I may have too many devices declared, but this is what I ended up with after many iterations. Probably most of these devices are useless.) The reason I am trying to get away from arts is that artsdsp seems to be inordinately slow after I installed several cryptography-related modules via YAST (actually booting into KDE seems to have slowed down, too). I am not sure if these newly-installed programs are the culprit; I did try to remove the modules 'cryptoloop' and 'twofish' (which did not get loaded before), but that did not improve things. If I run skype "straight," that is, just invoking it via 'skype', it runs alright, BUT it monopolizes the sound card. I am running 9.3. Could there be something wrong with the oss emulation library? TIA CF