After my brand new Hoary install, Totem wouldn't play anything. It would just
display a fairly hostile error dialog, "could not open resource for writing",
and quit. Two observations:
- The error message should be a lot more helpful. Something like, "Sound output
device ESD not found. Please use the Multimedia Systems Selector control panel
to select another one."
- The control panel could be placed a lot closer to the problem. Because it is
fundamentally affected by the Multimedia Systems Selector, Totem should probably
include a menu item ("Multimedia Preferences?") that opens the MSS control
panel. I only found the MSS by accident (after giving up entirely on trying to
get Totem to play sound).
After my brand new Hoary install, Totem wouldn't play anything. It would just
display a fairly hostile error dialog, "could not open resource for writing",
and quit. Two observations:
- The error message should be a lot more helpful. Something like, "Sound output
device ESD not found. Please use the Multimedia Systems Selector control panel
to select another one."
- The control panel could be placed a lot closer to the problem. Because it is
fundamentally affected by the Multimedia Systems Selector, Totem should probably
include a menu item ("Multimedia Preferences?") that opens the MSS control
panel. I only found the MSS by accident (after giving up entirely on trying to
get Totem to play sound).