ALSA pains

They say that ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) is the future for multimedia sound systems in linux. But somehow, I am yet to see a fully functional and elegantly installed ALSA system. The problem is not installation of the basic system but upgrading it. More than once, I have seen ALSA just falling apart during an upgrade. First, it happened with my Suse. But I was doing a manual upgrade back then. Yesterday, I did an automated upgrade of my kubuntu (I wanted to play with adept and friends), and ALSA just broke. And this time it wasn't me.... I did what adept suggested me to do
Invariably I ended up compiling my own ALSA which is a PITA. Anyways, Now I have a working sound system but for some reason flash plugin has been muted. God knows how to fix that. I believe flash plugins use esd instead of alsa or oss. And I have absolutely no experience with esd. In fact I never had it installed on my box (but my flash had sound until yesterday). One thing is clear though ... youtube is not all that fun without sound...

P.S.
Meanwhile to all those who are suffering because of unavailability of 64 bit Flash player and Java plugins, here is the simplest way to get it.It simply installs a 32 bit browser and related plugins. The best thing about it is all you need to do is answer a few questions. This should keep us happy till the official 64 bit software is out.