"the oldest wireless stick describes it as WEP and the later one as "
That's odd - they can't be both and talking to each other. WPA is far more secure if you have a choice.
Anyway, I take your point that it would be good if (a) the Linux wireless software detected the encryption system automatically and (b) when the Windows software did the same thing, it told you which one it was using instead of just asking for a password.

On the sound: another idea - disable desktop system sounds.
How you do that varies with desktop systems. On this one (Gnome) I selected System ->preferences -> sound and turned off "Enable software sound mixing (ESD)" and the result was that all my sound applications started working. What seems to happen is that your desktop software grabs the sound card and locks out anything else that wants to use it.
I suppose that I could enable ESD and somehow tell all the other sound-producing programs to send their sound to ESD but I don't really want that; I don't need beeps, boings and twangs when I'm doing desktop stuff anyway.

Somebody asked what distro I use. Debian 64 bit "testing" with Gnome desktop on my main system, Debian (32 bit) on a server that's on all the time and handles mail and databases (no desktop at all); Ubuntu (64 bit) + Gnome on another PC that lives in the studio and might one day be used for sound mixing, but it's dual boot and actually mostly get used with Windows XP for typesetting Mardles magazine, as that needs Page Plus. And Mary's on Debian with KDE.

Anahata