I'm not aware of a workaround yet...I was thinking of contacting Stefan 
Westerfeld, the author of aRts, for his opinion on it.  I took a quick look at 
the kde-multimedia list and noticed that there were some issues with pthreads 
interaction with respect to artsdsp and some changes had been made to the code.

Certainly the best solution would be having an optional aRts/ESD mode in the 
UNIX sound code...it should be relatively simple (although I've only looked at 
the aRts API, not ESD's).

I'm working on a project that uses sound cues from various sources so using 
something like aRts or ESD is ideal (no worries about what program is hogging 
the sound device, that way).



> The load creep may not be Squeak's fault, but that doesn't mean it isn't a
> problem.  There isn't any workaround?
> 
> I haven't noticed any problems, but Linux doesn't support my sound card
> and I don't do any real I/O stuff.
> 
> -Eric