November 9th, 2009 | 
Author: Yet another Ubuntu release, yet another set of Linux boxes in my house which no longer have sound. Kind of a pain since these are the systems my kids use for homework projects and online games.
I’m too old and too computer weary to go chasing after the same damn computer problem with every ‘new’ release. It used to be a fun challenge…. now its just a pain in the ass.
Hello Windows 7.
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Amen brother. Same exact issue at my house. I spent a few minutes here and there over a week to fix sound in the last version of Ubuntu, 9.04. Like you I am just tired of it. There was a time when I would install Linux and sound ALWAYS worked. From my experience this is a recent problem within the last two years. I am sorry, but if your goal is to get on people’s desktops, assuring sound works is absolutely one of the most important things you need to make sure works on 99% of computers. I posted a similar blog post last week. I hate to complain too much, because it is a free operating system, but it just pisses me off when I have something working and an upgrade of what is supposed to be the same operating system breaks it. Plus it appears from my 10 free minutes I had to look at it that they made yet more massive changes to a system that obviously does not work on a large percentage of the market that they are after. Instead of offering help on their forum I saw a combination of responses saying either your hardware was too new or too old. Not a good answer.
I just read your post. Pretty funny that we had identical reactions to this problem. Ubuntu really should have had this sound issue ironed out by now… and I’m really tired of the Ubuntu community blaming me and my systems for the problem. I keep FIXING it, they keep BREAKING it.