The pulseaudio package shipped with Mandriva 2008 Spring does not remember a default device setting across sessions. If a user were to use pavucontrol to select an alternate default device, it will only work for that session. Logging out then back in again will revert back to the system default. A separate issue also prevents the settings in client.conf from working when pulse is started under an X11 session . This is because the client.conf has a lower priority than the X11 root window properties. This update addresses both these issues, but please note that pulseaudio remembers the per-stream device preferences, so only new streams that have not been played before will routed to any new default device you pick. This can be remedied by removing the ~/.pulse/volume-restore.table file before logging in to a graphical session or by moving the individual streams manually in pavucontrol as required.