"I will not rehash history any more than to say that between
buggy/incomplete drivers for sound cards and the wonderful world of
alsa I've never been able to understand how the hell audio works
beyond getting output and, sporadically, input. I am the
quintessential dumb user of linux audio, even though I have tried
to figure it out.
"But let past be past. Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid. Pulseaudio ready
and everything, since 8.04. Why Ubuntu decided to plug in
pulseaudio without setting up any gui controls for it is beyond me.
All I know is that occasionally sound output will stop working (I
get 2 seconds of output and then it stops) and then "pkill pulse"
cures it."