Hello, I use Kubuntu 9.10 and everytime I boot up I have to open 'pulse audio volume control' and unmute the output devices section. I've found a few solutions on the web for gnome and one solution I found for KDE was to completely disable pulseaudio and switch to ALSA (It seems like a bit much seeing that this is the only pulsaudio problem I'm currently having).

Is there anything I can do to make sound work automatically when I startup.

Indeed, you should not have pulseaudio installed if you only use KDE in the first place. KDE doesn't use it, so the best solution is to actually remove all packages called pulseaudio-*, remove the file $HMOE/.kde/share/config/phonondevicesrc and the restart KDE.

That seems to work. Thanks.

Mamarok wrote:Indeed, you should not have pulseaudio installed if you only use KDE in the first place. KDE doesn't use it, so the best solution is to actually remove all packages called pulseaudio-*, remove the file $HMOE/.kde/share/config/phonondevicesrc and the restart KDE.

What exactly will this do to me over in GNOME then if I go there from time to time? Will I have no audio there then? These PulseAudio problems KDE is having feels like I'm using (struggling) with Ubuntu 7.04 all over again. Ugggh.

This may (or may not) solve my audio problems Im currently having, and before I start deleting away, I am curious what other ramifications I might have by getting rid of pulse. Thanks for any insight.

Very easy:
- Ubuntu with GNOME uses Pulseaudio
- Kubuntu with KDE doesn't use Pulseaudio
- KDE doesn't need Pulseaudio since there is Phonon and alsa, Pulseaudio doesn't work well with Phonon so expect conflicts.

The main problem here is that Kubuntu has to struggle to make KDE work on top of a system that is built for GNOME only. While the Kubuntu developers do a tremendous job to make KDE work well, the underlying structure is far from optimal...

So if you remove Pulseaudio completely you will have sound problems if you use the GNOME part, and if you leave it in you will have problems with sound in the KDE part. So it is up to you to decide which DE you are going to use as your main media playing environement.