HOWTO: Figure out what's using your soundcard in Linux

It's 2008, and while Linux audio is getting better for desktop users, I still occasionally find myself running into a situation where one application is tying up my soundcard. Sometimes I'll try to run jackd through qjackctl and it'll fail because Firefox has a flash video loaded in it or something like that.Anyways, to figure out what's using your soundcard on Linux, you can run:sudo fuser -v /dev/dsp*sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/*The first command above will list all the OSS applications using your sound hardware, and the latter will tackle ALSA applications.For example, if I run those commands with nothing running:gamegod@home:~/$ sudo fuser -v /dev/dsp*gamegod@home:~/$ sudo fuser -v /dev/snd/* USER PID ACCESS COMMAND/dev/snd/controlC0: gamegod 6236 F.... mixer_applet2The...

KDE 4.0 Released!

After having sworn off KDE many years ago, I might just have to give it a second shot - KDE 4.0 was just released, and brings a massive overhaul to the desktop environment. Congratulations to the entire KDE team on making this release happen. A lot of very talented people put a lot of hard work into this.If you're looking for eye-candy, check out the KDE 4 screenshots on their site. Kickoff and KRunner look well thought-out, and I'm itching to give them a try. They also look like they're better integrated into the desktop environment than their GNOME equivalents (Deskbar and any of those XP/Vista-style system panel clones).If you want to give...

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