Mixer devices and audio apps not finding sound card under Debian

Symptom: Audio mixer applications (kmix, wmix, etc.) fail to start under Debian, even though it appears the sound card modules are loaded into the kernel.

Problem: Most mixer and audio applications still access sound devices through the OSS layer by default. Debian always goes for the ALSA drivers.

Fix: ALSA has a backwards compatibility layer for OSS applications, which can be loaded through an additional kernel module:

    modprobe snd-pcm-oss

To ensure it loads when you next restart your computer, run:

    echo "snd-pcm-oss" >> /etc/modules