decreasing the volume of the bash sounds

[Darragh]

hello,
Hello, I'm using a laptop and the sound is very high. I want to be able to decrease the volume of the sounds while in a bash prompt.
for example, when I press back space at the start of a line it beeps as you'd expect. That's the type of sound I want to be able to
decrease.

I'd Also like to know how to get the sound to go through an earphone. While using windows when I connected an earphone in the
speakers automatically muted and sound was sent through the earphone jack however this doesn't seem to be the dase in Linux. how can
I set this up? I read that this is normal.

I'm using a dell d600 with Suse 9.3.

Thanks
Oh and by the way, I heard from someone that speakup wouldn't work with suse 9.3. is this still the case?

Darragh