I had the system boot sounds, etc., but couldn’t hear, say, youtube or Amarok. I was advised to remove pulseaudio, and now I have Amarok and video sounds back, but I still can’t seem to use Audacity, either to record from amarok or play back other recordings I’ve made. Has anyone overcome this problem with their pavillions? I have a dv6325 and am running openSuSE 11.1. Everything else (including wifi) works out of the box on 11.1 
OK, I found the pulseaudio taskbar applet running, and removed it in YaST, so now I can play back .wav (etc.) files in 11.1 x86_64, but for some reason can’t seem to record. There are only three options as recording sources: /dev/dsp, ALSA:HDA NVidia:CONEXANT Analog, and ALSA:default - the ALSA:default is what seems to work for playback, but the VU meters just peg no matter what input source I use.
Thanks,
Patti
Well, tried reinstalling 11.1 x86_64 on my laptop and still Audacity can’t seem to find a sound source. All other sound is normal (after removing pulseaudio).