The pulseaudio system should not be in Xubuntu

[bailey86]

This only applies to Xubuntu.

After updating some packages the sound control applet disapeared, the sound media button was stuck on red (off), notifications were showing about sound but eventually sound stopped working altogether.

It seems quite clear that xfce-mixer and the xfce sound system are not compatible with pulseaudio - it uses gstreamer instead. Here are some links explaining the situation:

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1871357.html

https://bugs.launchpad.net/xfce4-volumed/+bug/883485

http://xubuntu.org/news/12-04-release/

This is from the xfce sound guy steve dodier:

'Hi. I'm the xfce4-volumed developer.

xfce4-volumed is NOT compatible with Pulseaudio. Xubuntu 11.10 uses Pulseaudio by default, hence problems. If you want me to work on a Pulseaudio back-end for xfce4-volumed, please send an email to the xfce4 development mailing list and ask for Pulseaudio support in the back-end of xfce4-volumed AND xfce4-mixer, and I'll see with the other developers if we want to work on this or not (this will also depend on my workload, which is extremely high at the moment).

Besides, gnome-settings-daemon has NOTHING to do on a Xfce-based distribution. Sorry guys but I strongly disagree to this. Xfce provides several independent daemons that do the same job (among which xfce4-settings-helper and xfce4-volumed), these are integrated (at least partially or in future plans) with Xfce applications, these are designed around the philosophy of Xfce, the desktop environment that you are using. Thus, they are more likely to be now, and to stay in the future, more suitable to your needs.'

My fix is blogged at:

http://www.freewayprojects.com/2012/05/sound-not-working-in-xubuntu-12-04-on-my-new-hp-elitebook-will-not-unmute-with-media-button-solved/

Quite simply, the pulseaudio package needs to be purged from Xubuntu - and possibly when installing xfce-desktop on a standard Ubunut the pulseaudio package needs to be purged as well.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 12.04 (precise) reached end-of-life on April 28, 2017.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for pulseaudio (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]