Ubuntu 10.04 has 2 important bugs since 13th of June - with all updates installed -.

The first problem is with the sound. What you should do is to avoid putting the sound on mute, because you won't be able to start it again. This is what I did yesterday. And now I realized that I don't have sound anymore. It doesn't matter what settings I give to the system in sound preferences, because on the bar it just displays the speaker followed by three lines (3x "-"). This means that the sound is muted, even if in all my settings the sound is on. Of course that "waking up" the sound would be theoretically possible with third-party programs from the Software Center, but I'll let my system like it is, just to see how much it takes for developers to fix this.

The other problems is related to the...shutdown. Here it is a critical bug, which brings you to the login screen, when you select shutdown. I don't know why, but now the shutdown button has the same functionality as the log out one. Practically, there is now way to shut down your system from the OS. In case that you are here, what you can do in order to shutdown your system is to push and keep the power button on your PC/Laptop for 5 seconds (this cuts the power of your computer), or to unplug it from the power source (if you are on a laptop, use the first option). Both are improper ways of shutting down the system, but there is no alternative.

Note: My Ubuntu is up-to-date, at 9:15 GMT time, Monday, 14th of May, and the problems are not fixed. If an update appears in the update manager which fixes these problems, I'll update this article.

ATI HD 3xxx + Realtek HD problems on Windows XP.

I have a computer with an ATI HD 3850 graphic card which has, practically, included a sound card. The problem is that on the motherboard I have a Realtek HD sound card, which enters in conflict with the graphic card. From what I have observed, ATI starts the conflict and forces Windows to keep the sound played via their drivers (which is done through a HDMI connected to graphic card). This will make any try to play sound through motherboard's sound card to fail.

The solution is to go on device manager, and there to disable ATI HD sound card (under sound devices). Windows won't have any option, and will automatically playback sound via Realtek HD sound card.

This should apply to any ATI graphic card from series HD 3xxx.