lzslider

Okay, I'm completely new to this site and forum. First of all, I'd like to thank any and everyone who has some good advice to offer. Without community support like this, we'd all be trapped under the thumbs of MicroSloth and MacInTrash.

First, my issue (as briefly as I can make it):

In Ubuntu 9.04, I'm running WINE (latest version, though I'm booted into XP right now so I can't just look for sure) for the sole purpose of running Ventrilo's client for gaming. I play Wolfenstein Enemy Territory religiously, and am getting started learning Linux so as to (obviously) get rid of Windows completely. Once I'm comfortable enough, that'll happen. Right now, though, I have what is, for me, a BIG sound issue. While running Ventrilo on Ubuntu via WINE, everything seems to work fine. But when I minimize (or not) and fire up Enemy Territory, I have no sound in ET. When I close ET, close Ventrilo, and reload ET, THEN I have sound. I'm clueless, because all I know about troubleshooting this is based on Windows. With this wonderful new world of Linux, I'm kinda lost. I've found threads all over the net about "no sound in ET", but none of them seem to deal with the variable of running a program under WINE which requires the audio drivers. I'm left to assume at this point that WINE is bogarting the audio resources and somehow my Linux-based ET game can't use them. I'm starting to think that I should just install the Windows version of ET and run it under WINE as well, but that seems like a spiteful way to get what I want. I'd really like to understand the conflict here and learn something about how to legitimately resolve it. Anyone ever run into this before?

System specs:

AthlonXP 2600+ running at 2300MHz
Asus A7N-8X-E (rev. 2) mainboard with nForce2 chipset
1.5gB PC3200 DDR in dual-channel running at 200MHz
40gig master/160gig slave HDs
384k down/1meg up VerizonDSL connection (via cat5)
old PNY geForce FX 5200 (128mb, 8X AGP) but does what I need just fine

WinXPsp3/Ubuntu 9.04 dual boot


I'm drawing blanks trying to think of what other pertinent info I can post, but I think that'll do it. Once again, thanks in advance for any help on this.

coopstah13

I've seen something like this before, back when I used to play wow, I could only have sound in either wow or ventrilo but not both at the same time. Its because the application using alsa basically blocks all the other output. What you should try is enabling the virtual desktop, that might share it better, I've never tried it.

sarlacii

Hi all. Yip, I've had a similar issue with Quake way back. The application that uses the sound card basically takes control of it. Sharing doesn't work, so if you fire up something else, it will complain of not being able to access the sound device.
(BTW, the solution for Quake was to give everyone access to the sound device via chmod 666 /dev/dsp or similar... but in your case it is a wine resource sharing issue).