Pulseaudio is not evil
I have a midi-hifi connected to my desktop via digital since I listen to a lot of music and it works great with OSS, but not with ALSA.
Most of the time I keep Skype open, but as soon as someone sends me a message or I open a Skype window it steals the sound. I have to quit my audio player (or whatever else was using the sound) and Skype and start them both up to get sound back to where I want it.
I had been holding off installing Pulseaudio for a while because to my knowledge a lot of apps didn’t support it yet, and I though crappy sound was better that no sound. I gave it a try anyway.
The compatibility with OSS and ALSA seems superb. Banshee built with Pulseaudio support and WINE built with alsa works flawlessly side-by-side with my sound-card using the OSS driver. I’m sure I could have don’t this with ALSA, but I doubt it would have done it as well or as easy.
So to all the people that are complaining about Pulseaudio: Shut up and give it a try. It’s not really evil, quite the opposite.