The /usr/bin/startkde script references /etc/sysconfig/sound, which doesn't exist (on my system, at least, and sndconfig doesn't create one). The result is that kaudioserver and kwmsound are not started, regardless of whether there is a soundcard in the computer. I think that the needed file is /etc/sysconfig/soundcard. Moreover, sndconfig puts a localized comment to the start of /etc/sysconfig/soundcard (LANG=cs, LC_ALL=cs_CZ), which somehow confuses bash, so that .: /etc/sysconfig/souncard: cannot execute binary file appears in .xsession-errors and the CARDTYPE variable is not set either. Putting a line of #!/bin/bash at the start of /etc/sysconfig/soundcard fixes it, which IMHO should be done by sndconfig alone. Thanks for the time you spent with it. Mirek
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 6589 ***