I installed debian lenny with fvwm and found that if I used sound in firefox (iceweasel) it would block other programs' ability to use sound until I quit out of firefox.

I thought that the problem was the use of OSS. I switched firefox to use alsa-oss (aoss) and I switched XMMS to use ALSA and then I didn't have this conflict any more between those apps. But then I installed Audacity and it was blocked by firefox. I switched it to ALSA and then it worked. But when I installed snd I discovered that it was blocked by firefox. And snd is using jack which is set to use ALSA (according to qjackctl). So now I have a case I can't seem to fix.

Is there some general solution to this problem? It's kind of annoying to constantly fight this issue with every new sound using program. It seems kind of like firefox is the main offending program, since that's what I always end up having to kill. But why does everything want to use OSS by default? Isn't OSS the old, obsolete sound system? And why will the program that uses jack with ALSA not work with firefox?

Hi,
Download and compile EsounD , It enables apps to share the soundcard,
Have a nice afternoon
/Morris

ALSA allows programs to share the sound system. I've had firefox and XMMS simultaneously playing sound.

I tried esd (esound) but there seemed to be a long latency. I would press the "stop" button and sound would continue for 1-2 seconds more. It's not clear that this solves the problem either, since alsa programs can't run when esd is running. I can try to force all the programs to run under esd, but this requires that I invoke programs with the wrapper. And it's not clear how to run jack so that it uses esd.