I am trying to run more than one skype client at the same time.
If I do this by running them all under the same user, it works but has some side-effects that I would rather not have.
If I run them each under a different user, the above side-effects are gone but…
The extra skypes no longer have sound or mic. I thought that ALSA would mux the sound card regardless of user but am I misguided?
Any clues?
TIA.
AK
pulseaudio?
Hi google,
Thanks but I thought Pulse was a pariah in SuSE land 
no idea, all I know is it ships with 11.4 and it appears to be automatically installed (can’t remember if it was installed in 11.3). I left it in, some others hate and removed it.
Sound works, Kmix isn’t showing any channels, but gmixer is - figure this is KDE bug.
I just tested 3 different players and 3 different streams heard, BUT opening a player in my session as a different user did not produce any sound of course ymmv
update - test shows me sound is only available for the session you are in, unless I’m missing something and good chance I am
Pulse Audio is supposed to be built to adress such request. I am not sure you can do this in ALSA.
maybe oldcpu you tell.
how do you do that ? when i run another instance of Skype I get an error that only one instance is allowed.
Moi Argoson,
I have tried two ways. One as the same SuSE user of the first session and the other running as a different user. Here’s what happens/ed.
Same user: I have more than one Skype user name for the SuSE user. Just fire up the second (or third…) Skype instance. It will complain about the other instancei(s). Just login using one of the other Skype user names and there you go.
Both sessions are up and I can even call one from the other. In the .Skype directory structure, there will be a set of directories for each Skype user name. Down side is that when the session is restored after a logout/login, the newest Skype user session is always started and the older ones never. I have to manually start them.
Other User: I added a KDE menu item specifically for the extra Skype(s). It runs the same program but I tell it to run under a different SuSE user.
When I fire it up, I have to give the password of the user and then it runs. Skype does not complain about any other instances but there is no sound or microphone. Webcam video works fine.