[ltp] T60, Gutsy, woes!

[Richard Neill]

Phil wrote:
> And it takes as long to play sound. Press the 'test' button and nothing 
> happens, then around 1 minute later, I hear the sound!

That sounds like something weird is happening. Is this:
alsa,  oss, or  gstreamer at fault?

Suggestion: find a short .wav file. Then try to play it with either
  *   play    (if needed, install sox)   (which uses /dev/dsp directly)
  *   aplay   (the alsa method)

If they both work, it's gstreamer at fault. If they break, try using 
strace:      strace play somefile.wav
and see what is causing the wait.

As for Skype, it's generally just bad. Closed source, proprietary 
gratuitously-incompatible protocol, faith-based encryption, P2P bandwith 
usage.
=> Try out Ekiga (SIP) instead.

Richard



P.S. If you do decide on a reinstall, you can use dpkg and dselect to 
save/restore your package selection. Equally, if it's just a particular 
package being odd, either uninstall (with purge) and reinstall, or try 
dpkg-reconfigure. Lastly, check for a dotfile in your home directory.
(Eg delete .gconf* and .gnome*   - obviously, you'll lose your settings, 
so I suggest you  move rather than delete; or create a  new user 
account, and see if things work with that.)