audio player in Suse 9.0

It's about the X-something-player that's in the default package.
Whenever I listen to mp3s with that thing it can happen that either
a) it immediately crashes Suse to a freeze
b) it runs, but there is no sound
c) it runs, there is sound, but some time later it goes mute

The problem is obviously the sound-out plugin or whatever. I set it to all different types available, sometimes I'm lucky, sometimes I'm not. Can't figure it out. I guess chances are slim to get an up-to-date driver for my ancient Creative Labs PCI 128...if that even would solve this problem.
Probably I should just take another player, but I hate Linux - so far the system went completely dead twice in a row and installing it how I wanted it was a pain in the **** - and I have no idea what's out there nor how to install it.
I should really learn to use Linux, but I can't take the time right now.

And right now I can't get in there, anyway. Because of my little capacitor-problem it won't start. I try any suggestions later on when everything is working again.

If you are running KDE then you should set the sound output to use arts.

In KDE settings set it to start the sound server automatically at startup.