Little tips for better Slackware desktop experience. Most of these can be used in other Linux distributions as well.

Double-clicking in file manager (Thunar) shows no video (audio is ok, so program is running). Running mplayer from command line is fine. Turns out gui version is gmplayer - running from console shows this error message

Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_va_gl.so

So, just edit ~/.mplayer/gui.conf, find the line for vo_driver and set it to gl. Show be ok after that… at least in my case it is.

Note: NOT tested… just found this

Although the mplayer setting to disable xscreensaver has been selected, xscreensaver still runs!

Possible Solution: Edit ~/.mplayer/config

heartbeat-cmd="xscreensaver-command -deactivate >/dev/null 2>&1"

When using xdm, login fails sometimes with error message … Unable to establish ICE listener…

• append rc.local ← rm -rf /tmp/.ICE-unix/*

The solution is here.

• in short, ALSA using the HDMI output as default
• use alsamixer, [F6] select the card (the one that is NOT HDMI) and make sure output is not muted
• use aplay -l to identify the card/slot# and device#
• use aplay -D plughw:<card/slot#>,<device#> <WAV file> to test
• modify asound.conf in etc or ~/.asoundrc to fix this (sample below)

  asound.conf

  pcm.!default {
          type hw
          card <card/slot#>
     }
     ctl.!default {
          type hw
          card <card/slot#>
     }

As seen here…

Check asound.conf in etc:

  pcm.!default {
      type plug
      slave.pcm "softvol"
  }

  pcm.softvol {
      type softvol
      slave {
          pcm "dmix"
      }
      control {
          name "Pre-Amp"
          card 0
      }
      min_dB -5.0
      max_dB 20.0
      resolution 6
  }

Sometimes need type in pcm.!default to be hw