I have the same problem. A search of the internet displays several solutions that are meaningless. Many say that the speakers are muted by default. I didn't find that to be true. Several searches indicated that there are 2 settings which have "sense" in their names and they are new in kernel 2.6.10. They suggest that these "sense" settings be muted. Probllem is....they don't say where the "sense" settings can be found. I have tried RedHat, Fedora, Mandrake, SuSE, Ubuntu, Xandros, and countless other distro's trying to find at least one where everything works. None of them do. Everyone of them has something that doesn't work, sound card, NIC, Scanner, No Firewall, etc. At this point in Linux development, I'm not sure that Bill Gates is worried.