I had the same problem of no indication of a default sound card in the "Sound Preferences" menu. I solved this by adding the name of the current user to the list of users in the audio group, in the file "/etc/group". Suggestion: should this not be done automatically when adding new users with "useradd"?
-- gnome-sound-properties empty "Default sound card:" list https://launchpad.net/bugs/48545 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
