No Devices tab in Sound Preferences
 

I run Debian Etch and have just changed from KDE to Gnome, by installing gnome-core and removing kde.

I noticed this had somehow also removed alsa-base, but I wasn't bothered as I can still get sound, presumably via the OSS drivers, and I tend to only use mplayer and Real Player for audio anyway.

However, I notice when I open the Sound Preferences dialogue that the Devices tab is missing. Is this anything to be concerned about?

I reckon I can answer my own question here. I think the version of Gnome I pulled in from the Debian repositories was an older one than I'd been used to on Ubuntu, and the older version did not have the Devices tab on Sound Preferences.

I also had another problem in that gnome-volume-control was muted after each login. My solution was to install aumix then go to System, Preferences, Sessions and add

aumix -v100

as a startup command.