First of all "Hai thar"!
 I applied the last patch, the one supplied: 
ion Wrote:http://rapidshare.com/files/276633619/Pe....1-2995.sh
 (rapidshare=true evil, BUT please for the love of something cute and furry or whatever gods you may have faith in use 
box.net.)
I also compiled and used libopenal.so.1.10.622 as hardyn above described 
here.
Sound still wasn't satisfactory, so I followed the advice regarding deleting   libopenal.so from game dir.
That did not solve anything.
Details: Ubuntu karmic, x86_64, IntelHDA card, PulseAudio, NVIDIA - driver ver.190.42.
Somewhat detailed error description(could be better if I knew how): Sound cracks a bit and works for a while but then just dies, trying to close the game when sound is dead makes it the game hang and ssh from another host and kill -9 is the saviour.
Yes, I can agree that the experience with PulseAudio can be frustrating however it's not PulseAudio's 
fault, it's 
needed in the name of, amongst other things, 
cool stuff. 
This link might be enlightening as well for some Ubuntu users.
Thanks for a awesome game and your hard work! :3