Or pulseaudio, which, as has been said, was a solution in search of a problem. The latest Fedora thing is systemd, which will help it boot faster--of course, once it boots, your scanner still won't work unless there's someone your mom can call.
alsa caught up...but whatever
They work on little GUIs and things to help the imaginary average user (whom most developers seem to consider i synonomous with moron) while ignoring all the things that should be done.
+1