Errors: Alsa, dmix, unable to open slave
If you’re getting error messages like this
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:864:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
when you try to run Firefox in linux, or any other application for that matter, I may have the solution.
There’s plenty of fairly complicated stuff on the internet about that error. None of it helped me. My problem was actually mplayer.
I had it running in the background. But it was using OSS instead of ALSA. So when an ALSA application tried to run, like firefox, it freaked out, and displayed the above error.
Simply by running mplayer with -ao alsa passed to it my problem disappeared.
