ubuntu - hardy heron - pulseaudio

I just got done spending almost an entire day on this.

1. It seems the alsa 5.1 channels are all muted, for whatever reason. Since pulseaudio just sits on top of alsa that means 5.1 sound appears not to work. Just use the mixer and put all the channels up full in alsa.

2. Flash on firefox still won't work because you need to:
sudo apt-get install libflashsupport
This library does something to enable the sound to work.

3. set everything alsa to use pulse by adding the following to ~/.asoundrc

pcm.pulse {
type pulse
}
ctl.pulse {
type pulse
}
pcm.!default {
type pulse
}
ctl.!default {
type pulse
}

Why they made pulseaudio the default, firefox the default, and didn't include this library is beyond me...

4. they make pulseaudio the default, but don't include the tools. interesting. run this and install all the configurations and tools for pulseaudio:

sudo apt-get install libasound2-plugins "pulseaudio-*" paman padevchooser paprefs pavucontrol pavumeter