If Thunder&Lightning crashes shortly after being started, it's a good idea to have a look at the log file it creates.

less /tmp/stdout.txt

If you see the line

Initializing SoundMan... OpenAL (ALC) Error 40961: ALC_INVALID_DEVICE

then probably OpenAL doesn't have the configuration file it needs. This is due to TnL 070710 coming with OpenAL linked in but without a configuration file. Please enter the following commands on the shell:

echo "(define devices '(alsa))" > ~/.openalrc
echo '(define alsa-out-device "default")' >> ~/.openalrc 

If this doesn't help 

If you're still getting problems, there might be something wrong with the ALSA driver of your sound card. Type

echo "(define devices '(oss))" > ~/.openalrc

to configure the OpenAL sound library to use its OSS driver instead. If that still doesn't work, you can disable sound altogether with:

echo "(define devices '(null))" > ~/.openalrc

These changes will affect every game or program using OpenAL. To reverse them, delete the file .openalrc in your home folder:

rm ~/.openalrc