By default, the gnome-volume-control applet is on the panel. If you start X on a machine with no sound card, you get an error dialog with the message Couldn't open mixer device /dev/sound/mixer.
In addition to this, when starting Gnome I get this error message as above, click "Okay", and then promptly get "The volume-control-applet died unexpectedly." If I click "Reload", I get the "/dev/sound/mixer not found" again. If I click "OK" again, the applet successfully returns. Thia box (allegedly) has on-board sound.
It would be really nice if there were a way of globally disabling gnome-volume-control applet for LTSP servers. Any GUI checkbox or text based global config?
Disabling in what sense? It's no longer on the default panel, and you could have made that change yourself in the same way the gnome-panel RPM does. Or I guess you could just remove it from the gnome-applets package... Surely LTSP involves modified packages/config already?
Oops, you are right, I apologize. I just tested this with a new user, and it does indeed not add it by default to the panel anymore.