URL: http://www.tipstrs.com/tip/991/Turn-off-the-system-beep-in-Ubuntu
I have a Thinkpad T60p which is working really well for me. On it I've run various flavors of Ubuntu and as of a couple of weeks ago I put on Ubuntu 8.10 which has been working very well too except that I didn't get any options in the Preferences menu to switch off the damn loud system beep. The beep comes through the speakers and at a much much louder volume than any other sound or music.
I tried changing thins in BIOS and I tried installing various packages hoping one of them will give me the options. Finally I've found out how to disable it:
$ sudo modprobe -r pcspkr
This tip page showed me how to put it into /etc so it's applied all the time. Thanks Andy!
Comments
I had this problem too with 8.10 on a desktop machine. I finally found the option under System > Preferences > Sound > Sounds. The options there seem a little less than intuitive to me. In my case I want a visual alert instead of a beep, so "Play alerts and sound effects" must be on but "Play alert sound" must be off.
I used to put this line on my .bashrc
# shut up!
xset b 0