Sound not working.

I have Ubuntu 8.10 intrepid ibex and i use ALSA (Pulseaudio is DISABLED)
Everything runs great (wine, flash player, audacious, etc.), except second life

When i start second life i get this:
2009-01-06T13:17:09Z WARNING: init: ESD audio output FAILED to initialize: Error initializing output device.
2009-01-06T13:17:09Z WARNING: init: OSS audio output FAILED to initialize: Error initializing output device.

When i run "esd" the test sound plays correctly, This makes me think theres no problem with ESD
I have also tried running ./secondlife with aoss (alsa-oss, the alsa wrapper for OSS applications), but OSS still failed. (I use aoss with aMSN to support TCL's snack sound without issues.)
And obviously, i run ALSA native with no issues.

Also, when i'm in game and i accept streaming media, the game crashes. I have gstreamer0.10-alsa (among a bunch of other gstreamer0.10* stuff) installed.

Suggestions?

I'm guessing you're running 64-bit? The streaming media issue you described is exactly what used to happen to me until I switched over to a 32-bit install.

Disabling Pulseaudio in Intrepid is asking for trouble. Regardless of what certain people here may claim, PA does a pretty good job of rounding up the alphabet soup that Linux' sound services have become and keeping it corralled. It also prevents the sort of issues that arise (such as what you're experiencing) when multiple sound services try to access the same device. I recommend re-enabling Pulseaudio and then fix whatever issues you had that made you remove it in the first place.