A quick hack to fix Pidgin not having any sound

I noticed that ever since upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) the sound has been broken in Pidgin. Sound notifications are quite useful when away form the computer but within earshot or when focused on another task that prevents one from noticing visual notifications. While I’m not sure this is an ideal fix it suited my purposes since I didn’t really want to delve into the problem at this time.

On the “Buddy List” I selected “Tools - Preferences - Sounds”. I tried changing the “Sound Method” from Automatic to ALSA and ESD but neither worked. Finally I chose “Command” and for “Sound command” I entered aplay %s. Launching the aplay program for every sound is not very efficient but it’s a quick fix that solves the problem for now. At some point I will investigate further.