Comment 24 for bug 433654

   I am having this same problem. Unfortunately for me, this exact feature (being able to have multiple users logged in on different consoles, with independent sound) is one of the primary reasons I switched from OpenSuse to Ubuntu last year. OpenSuse handled this usage of the system very badly. And now, even more unfortunately, I've upgraded several machines to karmic koala, and this super important feature is no longer working on those machines. I could have stuck with OpenSuse and been just as displeased, rather than putting in extra effort to switch to Ubuntu, only to have the most attractive feature I was using removed in the new release.
   I use the multiple console feature to log into different opensim and second life servers. The separate users need their separate sound support working, or this simply cannot be done properly. Only the first user gets sound with the current bug, and that sound support even stops working after a few switches back and forth to different users. This is the kind of bad implementation I'd expect from Microsoft, not Ubuntu.
   Why switch to udev if HAL provided more features? Was that considered before the switch? It also makes this bug sound like we're all hosed for the long term, since a change to a much lower level component (udev) could take months and months, if it's even considered a priority by the udev people. I predict the new year will come without a fix for this being available. I am sad, but I bet the prediction is sound.
   Until this is fixed, I can't upgrade any more machines to karmic koala. Can i "upgrade" to the prior version and get my working OS, intrepid ibex, back? I have not seen any kind of capability to do that. So, now I'm definitely displeased that I upgraded. Every other ubuntu upgrade (I switched last year, but have had a couple ubuntu machines for a few years) I've done was a breeze, but not this one.