https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37555
--- Comment #1 from Rosanne DiMesio dimesio@earthlink.net --- Todd, you are making the mistake of assuming that the way your distro does things is the way everyone does it. In Linux, packaging conventions, including package names, vary greatly by distro: e.g., alsa-lib-devel.i686 is NOT the name of the package I had to install on openSUSE. And ALSA is not used at all on MacOSX or FreeBSD.
You are also incorrect in thinking that PulseAudio is a sound driver and that Wine looks for it. PulseAudio is a sound server that depends on either the ALSA or OSS driver, and it's the latter two (plus CoreAudio, the Mac audio driver) that configure looks for.
Configure has to work for all systems on which Wine might be built, so checking for a specific package or suggesting one to install is not feasible, and even a general message about ALSA would be incorrect for systems that don't use it.
However, I do agree the message "No sound system was found" is confusing to inexperienced users. Most of the time, only the 32 bit files are missing. Something like "No supported 32 bit sound system found" might be better. .