"The most annoying thing about this, however, were some of my desktop Linux friends who insisted this behavior was totally acceptable and not a bug." Bingo. S

"The most annoying thing about this, however, were some of my desktop Linux friends who insisted this behavior was totally acceptable and not a bug." Bingo. Spot on, and you've hit the biggest meta-issue when discussing desktop Linux usability issues. There isn't an agreed upon definition for "acceptable" that everyone can use to determine if something is really broken or not. I hit the same issue years ago, complained on some forums, people told me it wasn't a problem, I was doing something wrong, etc. Finally someone grokked what I was describing, agreed that I would be reasonable to expect 2 apps to be able to play sound at the same time, but that it "wasn't a big deal" and "never bothered" him. For a server, yes. For a desktop environment, it's been unacceptable to me for years, and was a primary reason why I switched away from desktop linux for day-to-day work (after about 5 years of dealing with the ups and downs of desktop linux' evolution).