ComputingConfidence

You can try the following two steps to /sideline/ pulse audio on 8.10

[1]
Open /etc/pulse/default.pa in an editor. Look for lines similar to the 
following two commented out lines:

#load-module module-alsa-sink
#load-module module-alsa-source device=hw:1,0

Add the following two lines after these two lines:

load-module module-alsa-sink device=dmix
load-module module-alsa-source device=dsnoop

The above change will force PA to use dmix/dsnoop and not take exclusive 
control of sound hardware.

[2]
Open /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf in an editor. Comment out the line which 
says /usr/share/alsa/pulse.conf by inserting a # in the beginning. After 
the change, the @hooks section would look something like the following.

@hooks [
    {
        func load
        files [
#           "/usr/share/alsa/pulse.conf"
            "/usr/share/alsa/bluetooth.conf"
            "/etc/asound.conf"
            "~/.asoundrc"
        ]
        errors false
    }
]

This will prevent PA from presenting itself as default output/input for 
all sound applications. Hence the other applications can continue to use 
ALSA as if there is no PA.

The above two changes fix all PA nuisance and all my sound applications 
work fine. You will need to select ALSA as sound device in 
System->Preferences->Sound. With these changes PA is rendered useless 
but it continues to run though nobody would use it. It doesn't consume 
any system resources. I still do not know what needs to be changed so 
that PA is not even started.

Sonal