Since version 8.4, Gcompris switched to gstreamer as sound output system. Until version 0.10.15 of gstreamer-plugins-base, there was a bug when playing short vorbis encoded files.

Unfortunately, most distributions of the end of 2007 shipped with a previous version of gstreamer-plugins-base, making all Gcompris activities based on sounds of letters and numbers unusable.

If you suffer from this problem, you can either convert vorbis files in alphabet directories to wav, keeping the .ogg extension, or ask for an update of gstreamer-plugins-base to your distribution team.

As of Mandriva 2008.0, you can grab the needed files here . You will normally only need the folling one on a standard system :

  gstreamer0.10-plugins-base-0.10.15-2mdv2008.0.i586.rpm