Comment 29 for bug 883485

After changing both /sound-card and /sound-card to *Pulse*, sound works fine and can be set using the mixer applet. However, the XF86Audio keys no longer influence sound volume nor mute status. They do get reflected in the OSD, though.

So, it seems like the mixer applet works with pulse audio just fine, but the daemon handling the XF86 keys and OSD doesn't. What can be done about this? IMHO, removing pulse audio is not a viable option. It's a dependency of xubuntu-desktop, after all, so it should work in a regular install.

I'm running Xubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) on a HP mini 210, btw.