[twaugh@meme twaugh]$ ls -l /dev/mixer crw------- 1 twaugh sys 14, 0 Apr 17 1999 /dev/mixer [twaugh@meme twaugh]$ kmix kmix: Could not open mixer. Perhaps you have no permission to access the mixer device. Login as root and do a 'chmod a+rw /dev/mixer*' to allow the access. In fact it failed because I haven't configured sound yet -- the permissions on /dev/mixer* as shipped are fine because pam takes care of it. Perhaps the message should say something more harmless if open fails with -ENOSYS.
Fixed. It now tells you to run /usr/sbin/sndconfig.