Hi,
This is Bisan Shah. I have installed Red Hat 9 successfully on "COMPAQ NX6110" model Laptop with windows XP os.
For playing Songs (mp3 format) i hav also installed mp3blaster on it. but when i m trying to play song...i m getting error msg as "FAILED TO OPEN SOUND DEVICE.
I m able to play songs on my Windows XP os everyday. In device manager, showing sound card name is "SOUNDMAX INTEGRATED DIGITAL AUDIO".
i m very new in Linux...so can u please help me out to solve this prob sir!!!???

Rgds,
Bisan Shah

You can't open your sound device, because something elese propably is blocking it. Think about and read about software sound mixing on Linux. It is supported by alsa dmix plugin or esd.

Bisan, you have a very old version of RH. Redhat was forked about 3 or 4 years ago. Now is RedHat Enterprise Edition (corporate basically) and FEDORA CORE (personal). The latest version is about release 6, I believe.
In the year 2005, a report was released about ALSA, and its nasty habit of commandeering and not letting go of the sound system. Try a more up to date release. Personally, I use Mandriva, a RedHat RPM based distribution. Latest is 2007, however a number of people are having trouble with the new release, so I have decided to stick with my 2006 release for the time being. Installed on my Acer 3000 laptop (AMD Sempron@2.8Gb) and on my server (AMD Athlon 1.6 Gb). Both run sweet as candy, sound, video, LAN, internet, all perfect.

Hoping this can help.

Shorty943

registered Linux user 437639
registered Linux machine 77042