" downloaded/installed the latest 64 bit seamonkey and latest 64 bit firefox to /mnt/home...you guessed it - no sound... Downloaded/installed mikewalsh's FirefoxESR-portable64... Copied the [extra-libs] files to /usr/lib and Voila!!!...Is that the correct location or was I just lucky?" The former.
Fortunately, we are blessed with two mental systems: the analytic and the 'gestalt'. The analytic is language --we use it to communicate even when only engaging in the internal monologues we call thinking and reasoning. In the history of LIfe, it is relatively recent. 'Gestalt' is what produces feelings, guesses and intuitions. The gestalt uses all your inherited capabilities and all your experiences --including previously observed dialogs and internal monologues-- to jump to an understanding even if we haven't yet or can't reach a logical conclusion. Indeed, the evidence is that having reach a conclusion we then employ analysis and selective memory to justify it. That conclusion can be wrong and our subsequent rationalizations faulty. But it is sufficiently more often right that it provides a 'survival advantage'. Otherwise it would have died out and we wouldn't have it.
With the exception of a couple of recent Puppies, Puppies don't include the 'Pulse-Audio' system and its libraries. The original producers of 'Mozillas' and 'Chromiums' expect it to be present. Hence, no sound. As a 'work-around', Puppies have provided the simpler system, apulse. Those are the libraries Mike Walsh provides in the extralibs folder within his portables. But his Web-browsers still have to be instructed to use them. MikeWalsh has recently taken to structuring his portables the same way. I don't always use his builds. But I think my firefox64ESR is his. Opening the LAUNCH script in a text editor reveals this line:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HERE/:$HERE/extralibs${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH} "$HERE/firefox64/firefox" "$@" -profile "$HERE/profile"; colored for emphasis.
That tells the application to use the libraries it will find in the extralibs folder "HERE".
By copying those libraries to /usr/lib, you placed them in a location where all Puppies are constructed to look for libraries.
There was only two things potentially wrong with your 'gestalt' conclusion. The first rarely happens. Copying libraries to /usr/lib could have overwritten differently constructed libraries bearing the same name breaking applications which depended on them. The second did, but isn't fatal: just a waste of RAM and adds complexity to keeping your web-browser up-to-date with your preferred setting and addons.
Makers of Web-browsers expect that a User will have a Home folder on his/her Storage media and structure the customizations and addons to be written there; and the cache from websites stored there. But Puppies employ a 'merge-file-system-in-RAM' where the /root folder --your Home folder-- is created anew on each boot-up. If you're operating under PupMode 13 (Puppy boots from a USB-Key, or 'thinks' it is) the changes you make are not preserved unless you execute a Save. More importantly, however, during you session web-cache --the files a website downloads and stores on your computer so that it doesn't have to do that again the next time you look at the web-page-- builds up in RAM. With graphic-rich websites, you can use the 'rule of thumb' 100 Mbs per web-page. The RAM you have available for actual work can be quickly lost.
MikeWalsh's portables avoid that. The LAUNCH script creates a folder named 'profile' within the portable folder. The above quoted line instructs the Web-browser to use that folder for storing addons, settings and web-cache. There's another benefit to MikeWalsh's portables. You can update them and because they are not in 'Puppy-Space' doing so does not require a Save.
But even if (like what happened with Palemoon) firefox and seamonkey for some reason can no longer auto-update, if MikeWalsh's portables hasn't yet provided a new version, there's a good chance that you can 'roll your own' unless firefox or seamonkey radically changes how they do things. See this post, and use the attachment provided, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 470#p42470