How does sound work in Linux? I heard once that the sound was queaed (or however you spell it) in a buffer, instead of real-time, like Windows. If that''s so, what''s the point in that? And if it''s quaed in a buffer, why is it so hard to get two sounds to play at the same time?

It''s spelled "queued" . I don''t know anything about how the low level sound output is managed in Linux (or any other OS, really). However, I know that the higher level libraries for sound output make it pretty easy (and it sure seems close enough to realtime where I don''t notice it ). To get two sounds to play at the same time you must pass them through a mixer. The sound libraries I refer to supply one and some abstract it away pretty well. Look into SDL or OpenAL if you want to deal with high-level sound output.

If you don''t intend to run sync, do mixing locally,
and performance is an issue, then you can make your
life simpler by looking into

http://wolfpack.twu.net/YIFF/