ALSA quirks
 

I am currently running Fedora Core 3 on a generic laptop w/integrated sound. I want to know if ALSA is capable of output from multiple apps running at the same time. Currently, if I'm using xmms or rhythmbox while gaim is open, the gaim logon/off sounds will play during a song transition and an "error: alsa device in use" or somesuch message will appear for rhythmbox.

they'll share the sound driver. you'll have to work out what sound chip the laptop is using though.

You'll probably have to write some script yourself to make it work if your card doesn't support hardware mixing. They have some tutorials on it and you can find a lot of them online but I haven't tried those myself.