Like it or not (personally I am in the second category) Blackboard Collaborate or Elluminate (as it is still more commonly referred to) is something you have a hard time avoiding if you work in online education. I discovered that I have audio issues on some Ubuntu Linux machines and found the following to fix the issues. 1) Install alsa-aoss apt-get install alsa-oss 2) Save the Elluminate Java Webstard (.JNLP) file to a local folder – DO NOT OPEN IN BROWSER