I had a system burnout(power supply smps or something burnt and this caused motherboard issues) and i had to reinstall openSUSE again today.
I have installed openSUSE 12.2 / GNOME 4.3.2.
On finishing installation i found no device or a “dummy device” in the gnome top panel “volume control” and no sound hardware listed in hardware tab.
But when i went to YaST==>Sound , I Could play “test” sound there.
This was a huge turn off and after frantic search in SDB and forums i found that the solutions offered were long winded and difficult for a novice like me to follow.
When i opened YaST Software manager i found that “pavucontrol - PulseAudio Volume Control” was not installed.
I had a hunch and when i installed it and restarted my system the sound hardware appeared in volume control in top panel.
Why is this not installed by default?
Is this a oversight?
Pavucontrol does not do what you think. It is simply a gtk frontend to controlling pulseaudio volume. Pulseaudio will work fine without it installed.
The issue must have been elsewhere?
I see . But why did the hardware appear after installing pavucontrol ?
Also my previous motherboard is ASRock and now it is dreaded intel board 
Did that make a difference? With ASRock the hardware did show up without me installing pavucontrol
So it is intel motherboard fault ?