Strange I don't see the issues you're talking about I use Ubuntu Desktop on a variety of desktops and laptops. I'd say PA was stable by Ubuntu 12.04. I do Skype and Google Talkplugin (now Hangouts).
Working in your use case doesn't invalidate someone else's. I've had some systems that pulseaudio has been great for. I have some in which I still don't have fully working sound.
In particular for problems of getting Youtube (or any browser audio) to work while other apps use JACK directly.
Although on a recent new install it seemed to work without them as well.
One problem is I need to start/stop the qJackCtl thing every time my laptop comes back from sleep, to get sound working again. There must be a way to automate (or, preferably, fix) this, right? Anyone know?
To be fair, the only reason to run Pulseaudio is "everyone else is" - i.e. its fully glommed into the distro. ALSA and Jack have been stable for a lot of people, even before Lennart decided to tackle 'all the problems'.
But, also to be fair - like you, I maintain my own systems and do not overly depend on the teeming-mass-reality as a derivation of stability. My personal Linux DAW systems, running now for decades, have attained a level of productivity that I would at least hope is represented in the current niveau, vis a vis Popular Linux Distro designed for audio (e.g. pure:dyne, Arch Pro Audio, 64 Studio, UbuntuStudio, et al.) .. for the newcomer, it should of course 'all just work' from boot-up, which I hope is the case. It is for me, anyway: I've expunged pulseaudio from all of my machines, and make do with Jack. My studio uses 48-channels of digital audio, everything-is-a-file .. a working and functional DAW, thousands of plugins, about 12 MIDI devices (synthesizers/effects rack) and so on, and the best thing of all: all source code included. So, yeah .. ;)
Thank you! I keep meaning to figure out that power-management thing, but keep putting it off because I vaguely don't know where to start. Now I have something, I will dig into it :-D