I need to clear up some earlier misreporting on my part. The sound problem described here does exit in Mandriva. It's just that Mandriva has a sound configuration module in 'Mandriva Control Center' that allows user to disable pulseaudio. To have stable volume on boot or login I do have to disable pulseaudio.

Also openSuSE KDE currently does not have pulseaudio as default sound server. openSuSE only uses pulseaudio for Gnome apps. In my current openSuSE install pulseaudio is not currently installed [I had thought it was].From:

http://en.opensuse.org/PulseAudio

openSUSE 11.2, KDE 4.2

Pulseaudio is not used as default sound server. Run as root:

setup-pulseaudio --enable

to make it default. If on the other hand you wish to disable pulseaudio altogether and fall-back to ALSA for all GNOME based applications, please read section Disabling pulseaudio completely (ALSA fall-back) below.
Disabling Pulseaudio autospawn

Due to dependencies it is often not possible to uninstall pulseaudio completely. To prevent use of pulseaudio nevertheless autostarting the daemon can be prevented by setting autospawn = no in /etc/pulse/client.conf
Disabling pulseaudio completely (ALSA fall-back)

Under openSUSE 11.2, pulseaudio is the audio subsystem of choice for all GNOME based applications. This may cause various coexistence problems, especially in relation to phonon, KDE's sound subsystem that uses ALSA. A very common symptom is that ALSA audio is unable to acquire real-time (or more precisely near-real-time) scheduling, in effect causing delayed and/or clipped sound. Many have found that disabling pulseaudio completely, and thus forcing all GNOME based applications to use ALSA, works much better for them. To accomplish this do the following:

* Disable pulseaudio:

setup-pulseaudio --disable

* Remove all pulseaudio packages except libpulse-mainloop-glib0 and libpulse0, as these are required by all GNOME based applications (since they are compiled with pulseaudio by default).
* Hide the libraries provided by the libpulse-mainloop-glib0 and libpulse0 packages, in order to force GNOME applications to ALSA fall-back. To do this, move them out of the way by issuing the following commands as root (openSUSE 11.2 x86_x64 assumed):

cd /usr/lib64
md HIDDEN
mv *pulse* HIDDEN
ldconfig

Note that if under $HOME/.pulse you have properly setup configuration files (e.g. from when pulseaudio was enabled), the last step above for hiding the pulseaudio libraries may not be required. However, if you accidentally (or intentionally) delete $HOME/.pulse, GNOME based applications will loose audio once again. Regardless of the contents of /etc/asound.conf, moving the libraries out of the way is the only guaranteed method to force fall-back to ALSA.

* Use an ALSA compatible mixer (e.g. kmix under KDE or alsamixer in a terminal) and make sure all channels of interest are not muted.

Note that this is a work-around, not a definite solution: if either the libpulse-mainloop-glib0 and/or the libpulse0 package is updated, you will need to reissue the above commands to move the pulseaudio libraries out of the way once again.
So both Mandriva and openSuSE have a way to disable pulseaudio if it appears to be causing a problem.

---------- Post added at 08:30 PM CST ---------- Previous post was at 07:43 PM CST ----------

So here is a work around I have found that works for me in Fedora 12.

*I can't recommend for anyone else to do this. I don't know enough [clearly].*

*This may break your system*

1st I removed these packages:

alsa-plugins-pulseaudio
kde-settings-pulseaudio
pulseaudio-utils
pulseaudio-module-x11

Then I rebooted and as regular user not root:

Code:
$ pulseaudio -k
and then created this file [again as regular user]:

~/.pulse/client.conf

with this line:

Code:
autospawn = no
then I rebooted. Now I can logout/login or reboot and volume does not get changed by some bleeping Ghost in the Machine!!!

I have tried a *few* sound apps and haven't found anything that doesn't work *so far*. If one chooses to use this note that it works only for the user that did it. Also you may have to set apps that use pulseaudio by default to use alsa instead.

Also worth noting. I don't know for a fact that pulseaudio is the problem. I do know that with my hardware disabling or removing pulseaudio packages corrects this particular problem.

Now maybe I know enough to file a bug report. But where? I'll be looking in to that in coming days...