Support for certain classes of hardware has often been problematic for the Linux kernel, and 3D graphics chips have tended to be at the top of the list. Over the last few years, through a combination of openness at Intel and AMD/ATI and reverse engineering for NVIDIA, the graphics problem has mostly been solved - for desktop systems.

A digital audio editor is a computer application for audio editing or digital audio manipulation. Usually, a digital audio editor allows the user to record and edit audio, mix multiple sound sources/tracks, apply simple or advanced effects or filters, playback sound, and convert different audio file formats and different sound quality levels.

FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. It is a very fast video and audio converter and includes libavcodec which is the leading audio/video codec library. It can also grab from a live audio/video source.

So sound issues STILL plague Linux in general. I think we can all agree that the decision to make Pulse Audio the default sound daemon in Linux has resulted in mixed results at best.

If you want to convert audio files on Linux, Audio-convert-mod is worth a try. Audio-convert-mod is a simple and easy-to-use audio file converter. It supports many formats, includes: MP3, OGG, FLAC, WAV, AAC/MP4/M4A, MAC/Monkey’s Audio/APE, MPC (Musepack), WV (wavpack) etc. In addition, with Audio-convert-mod, you can also batch convert audio files.

There's a problem with the state of Linux audio, and it's not that it doesn't always work. The issue is that it's overcomplicated.

Banshee is a simple but powerful multimedia player with Audio/Video playback support, subscribe and playback podcasts and last.fm radio from Banshee. With Banshee1.2 Import, organize, play, share your music and videos using Banshee’s simple but powerful interface. Rip CDs, play and sync your iPod, create playlists, and burn audio and MP3 CDs

I’ve found that loading a Flash applet in Firefox will cause Firefox to lock my whole system’s audio playback. Audio and video in Totem don’t even start to play when this happens. Until Firefox is closed, the only application that can play audio is Flash.

I am using plantronics USB headset connected to a laptop with Ubuntu Hardy installed. I can play audio through USB headset using totem movie player after it was changed in System > Preferences > Sound. The problem is Mozilla Firefox is not playing audio through USB headset. Firefox can play audio through the laptop speakers but the sound sucks.