Title: How to fix Skype hogging audio hardware Slug: skype-alsa
## TL; DRQuick fix: run
aoss skype
instead of
skype
and you're fine.
OK guys, whether PulseAudio is good or not, the way it works under Ubuntu means it's a crappy choice. PA Might work perfectly well under Arch or Debian — but my problems were under GNU/Linux Ubuntu 10.04.
Currently, I have several audio subsystems here. Having Alsa and PulseAudio at once isn't that uncommon. However, on my computer if I use PulseAudio then no Alsa application can access the sound outputs or inputs. I haven't bothered fixing it because with most apps I can fix it by changing the output being used; Skype defaults to PulseAudio if it's present, ignoring Alsa. Skype was the last holdout, and it was annoying me. All the guides I could find mentioned uninstalling PulseAudio or heavyweight configuration changes to Alsa, but one of them defined a configuration which had PulseAudio and Alsa at the same time; they launched Skype with aoss skype and it worked. The command line included some other crud, but it tipped me off on aoss.
Apparently Alsa supplies the tool aoss which wraps any binary and makes it use Alsa. So, after trying: success!
You can edit the Ubuntu menu entry by right-clicking on Applications in the Gnome Panel, and choosing Edit menus. There, under Internet, you can click on the Skype entry (make sure not to uncheck it) and then click the Properties button to the right. This should open a window called Launcher Properties in which you can change the Command field to aoss skype. Now you can launch Skype through the menu, and it works.
I'm not too big on installing corporate malware, but Skype is one of the few things you can't live without nowadays if you interface with normal humans.
There should be a free fully-p2p solution to this problem that just works, but there isn't anything prominent yet. I'm not so certain it'd beat Skype unless it had very serious corporation backing.