> I get the impression that freedesktop.org are trying to > pick/have picked a common lesser-of-the-evils for unix > desktops. Well, AFAIK the KDE people are looking for a replacement for arts in KDE 4. Currently, gstreamer seems to be one of the possible candidates. I really hope that they choose a common layer in colaboration with freedesktop.org and the Gnome people. But even if Gnome and KDE choose gstreamer as multimedia layer we'll again have different layers; what about command line programs or alternative window managers? And I guess you're just kiddin' ;-) . Of course my question was if JACKD would be a possible candidate that all major distributors will include in their distros and start it during boot time. This way we would have a common audio layer. And because JACK can work on top of OSS as well as on ALSA based systems, it's a very flexible solution. BTW: Meanwhile artsd can use JACK for audio output. Thanks a lot for JACK BTW :) . Best regards ce