I've been fooling around with my Linux box trying to get the sound working. As a practical matter it's basically a waste of time. I could go down to the local computer shop, buy a new sound board for $10, plug it in and it would probably work. But learning the in's and out's of Linux might be a useful skill, so I have taken to investigating the problem, and this means being assimilated into the Linux culture. If I keep it down to an hour or two a day, it is not too bad. I learn a little bit, I make a little progress, I get disgusted with the convoluted way this, that or the other was implemented. Then I stop for the day, and let the disgust dissipate, and the next day I am ready to try a little more. What I wouldn't give for a design document that explains how this all supposed to work. There probably is one somewhere in the thousands (3,715 to be exact) of files in the ASLA subsystem, but I'll be durned if I know where it is. Meanwhile I am sorting it out by stepping through the code for aplay with gdb (Gnu Debugger).
Most of the code looks like it is involved in setting things up, opening the file, figuring out what format it is, what device is going to get this data. Then at some point it flips a switch, something magic happens, and sound comes out of the speakers. Or, as in my case, not.
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