I have tried numerous distros and finally settled on slackware 10.0. Its excellent (thanks team slackware!) and everything is runny smoothly and the way i like it... Apart from 2 things... my sound system is mess up and gaim wont work due to gtk issues....

my sound system: If i drag an audio file into konqueror's media player sidebar it plays fine, and if i play a video in xine theres sound... (so i think arts is working - and so is the arts mixer) but when i try and play anything with mplayer or xmms, the program freezes! (i dont think this is a bug in the programs, but in the output plugin or something) iv tried using alsa, and oss. Both crashes. Also i cant start jack with alsa as alsa cant work because of the sound system problem. Alsa and jack (and before i configured them oss) all worked fine. But then i installed a program (wired) which required new gtk, and for some unknown reason that buggered it....

GTK: I upgraded gtk to the latest version of 2 and instantly caused devistation to every gtk based app (firefox, gdm, gaim, gimp...) but i fixed that problem by installing it from source instead of tgz files. So everything works now, apart from gaim... it comes up with an unresolved symbol or similar error half way through the source install and quits (during make) but if i install from tgz, it installs but doesn't run because it cant find gtk files that are installed - but they are!? it says it cant find a gtk file and writes the full path, and if i follow the path, the file is there!???!

(iv got rid of gtk and tried to install the version that was on there originally and it still didn't work)

is this a common problem?
i feel like formatting my HD again or trying another distro.

if this is gona be hard to fix i might just try another one.
All this frustration over 2 little things!!!

What i want in that case is a full linux distro which is fast and stable and has alot of software for it/ good package management. Iv tried yopper and its good but dont work with my modem!! (speedtouch silver 330).

Iv also tried:
red hat 7 + 9, fredora 1+ 2 = did like, too slow + buggy
Debian woody 3 = too old and the installer is a farse.
knoppix = excellent but i want something permenant
Freebsd = dont work on any of my 3 computers!!
DSL/Luit Linux = fast but not every day enough
and some others that iv forgotten.
I dont want to try mandrake (yuk), or any other "my first linux os" distros
But at the same time i feel if i got gentoo id have a mental breakdown.

Does debian sarge come highly recomended?
should i even give suse a look?
i dont know if theres a better OS out there than slackware, but if im gona reformat i might aswell try something new.

but if the solution to my problem is as easy as 123 then ill fix it, but i fear its not as easy

thanks for all you help
alain

Okies, lemme just get a few things clear, arts works, but alsa nor oss doesnt? okies.. So, you have done alsaconfig and it found your card ok and so on? whatabout if you disable arts (kill it for eg (; ), and do a /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa restart ?

The new gtk+2 was a farse in the current release.. It broke every app that needed gtk.. (: Luckily the finnish mirror hadnt updated yet, so could fall back to the previous version.. (:

imho, if youve gotten this deep in slackware, youre off to a good start.. Slackware teaches you the hard way, yea, but thats how I learned it.. And yea, it does pay off.. All the mainstream newbie-friendly distros just wernt something I was looking for.. As you said it, the way I like it.. (:

My advice is to disable arts at all and use Alsa DMIX layer (alsa.opensrc.org). It may be arts messing your sound up.