["Sound"]

["ALSA"], the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, was originally started because the OSS architecture (see ["OSSFree"]) was outdated and the free variant of OSS lacked some drivers available only in the commercial variant.

["ALSA"] is not just a set of ["sound"] drivers, it is also a library with an extensible API that gives applications access to the latest features of sound cards (e.g., multiple sound channels, Dolby AC-3, etc.)

For years ["ALSA"] was a project separate from Linux. The drivers were added to Linux during the 2.5 development series and became the standard sound driver system in Linux 2.6.

ALSA is backward compatible with OSS.

Configuration

The latest ALSA packages should work out of the package. The only hitch may be module loading. Hotplug or discover can take care of this. Alternatively, you can run the alsaconf utility; this writes an extra configuration file, /etc/modutils/sound or /etc/modprobe.d/sound, containing lines like these: 

    alias snd-card-0 snd-cs46xx
    options snd-cs46xx index=0

With these module loader configuration entries in place, when the "snd" module loads it will load snd-cs46xx above itself.

More information

For more information, read the README.Debian files in the alsa-base and alsa-source packages or 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 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/01/1645231&mode=thread&tid=90