["ALSA"] was originally started because the ["OSSFree"] architecture was outdated, lacked certain sound drivers and the full version was being sold commercially (["OSSLinux"]).

["ALSA"] is not just a set of ["sound"] drivers, it is also an API that allows for more extensibility as sound cards have more and more features added (eg. multiple sound channels, Dolby AC-3, etc.)

For years, ["ALSA"] has remained a separate project from the Linux kernel but the newest development kernels(2.5.x) are beginning to incorporate ["ALSA"]. With any luck, the next branch of stable kernels (2.6.x or 3.0.x) will include this new driver and API collection.

ALSA does provide backward compatibility with ["OSSFree"] (which is used by most sound-enabled Linux applications) but, to take full advantage of the API, the application must be rewritten.

Packages

ALSA package installs alsa-base, alsa-utils, ["pciutils"] packages.

More information

For more information, check out http://www.alsa-project.org and http://alsa.opensrc.org

New, just in:

Installing and Configuring ALSA Sound Modules in Debian GNU/Linux HOWTO Version 1.0 http://www.linuxorbit.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=541&page=1

Installing/Configuring ALSA Sound Modules In Debian http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/01/1645231&mode=thread&tid=90