esd interferes with other programs

[Svante Signell <svante signell telia com>]

Hello,

Sorry for taking your time but I have a problem with gnome on a Dell
Inspiron 4100. When running applications requiring the sound card,
they refuse to start because esd is already running. The sound card at
hand does not support multiple channels, it's a Crystal 4205, Cirrus
Logic, AC97. Working sound drivers are either oss i810.o or alsa using
snd-intel8x0.o et al. Currently I'm using alsa.

I know that the problem is maybe with the apps. not gnome, but the
cause of the problem is esd, so posting here is a first try. BTW how
is this solved in KDE? Does a simple solution exist? Currently I
have to killall esd before running the application at hand.

Thanks,
Svante Signell