Debian testing: problems with x-sessions and sound.

[Adam <a24061@yahoo.com>]

I've installed Debian testing with gdm on an Athlon system.  The Debian and
KDE sessions work (and are the same); so does "failsafe xterm", which is a
bit bare for my taste.

Every time I try GNOME or Failsafe GNOME, I get the following error
message:

 There was an error startin the GNOME Settings Daemon.
 Some things, such as themes, sounds, or background settings may not work
correctly.
 The Settings Daemon restarted too many times.
 The last error message was:
 Failed to activate 'OAFID:GNOME_SettingsDaemon'
 GNOME will still try to restart the Settings Daemon next time you log in.
 Then an empty coloured background (until I press Ctl-Alt-Backspace).

Yesterday I installed wmaker and added a symlink in /etc/gdm/Sessions to
the wmaker binary.  This allowed me to log in to WindowMaker, but screwed
up GNOME and KDE.  I would like for all three to work on the same machine
-- what do I need to do?  (Let me know if I should post some dpkg -l
output.)


Also, I have no sound.  When I log into KDE, I get this error:

Sound server informationl message:
Error while initializing the sound driver:
device /dev/dsp can't be opened (Permission denied)
The sound server will continue, using the null output device.

I installed sndconfig, since I've had luck with that on my previous distro. 
It identifies the card:

 "A PCI sound card was found in your system. The details are: Model:
Ensoniq|5880 AudioPCI"
then says
"An error occurred while writing the config file."

And of course, I can't get any sound out.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Adam