Sound

[Ross Boylan <RossBoylan@stanfordalumni.org>]

I've been trying to get some sound out of my Linux system, and am pretty 
baffled.  I gather there are several different ways to do it, and would 
like to know if there is a preferred one.  I have an ISA AWE-64 
soundblaster on a 2.2.17 kernel, AMD K6-2, potato system with some woody 
enhancements.  I'm running GNOME-Helix.

1) The Mini-Howto on SB is a bit old, and it's not clear to me if it's 
still applicable.  At any rate, it is  not directed at Debian 
packages.  The main Sound How-To is current, but again isn't addressed to 
Debian packaging.

2) I had decided (based on it's own description?  or the fact that it 
seemed to be more loadable than the alternatives?  it's been awhile) that 
the Alsa system was the way to go.  However, there are various pieces, and 
their interrelations are not clear to me (base, library, modules, drivers, 
utililties, ...).  There didn't seem to be a "task" or a good package (I 
had hoped the utilities might do it) which will pull everything in.

The modules that are there are for a much earlier version of the kernel 
than potato uses, and there doesn't seem to be anything for the current 
one.  Joey H asked about this a few weeks ago.  My interpretation of the 
response was that alsa was packaged so you had to get the source and build 
from it.

One of the attractions of the module based approach seemed to me that one 
didn't need to go recompiling things to get them to work, so this didn't 
grab me much.

3) There's a SB specific package, but I'm not sure what sound model it 
participates in, and what additional stuff I would need to do to use it.

4) And then there are some other things that I think represent the more 
traditional sound model.

Also, I would like to know a simple test to see if sound is working.

I'm hoping there's an analogy to, for example, exim.  There are lots of 
mail transports, but there's one that's encouraged and (sort of) easy to 
set up.  So I'd appreciate any pointers.  By the way, the hardware emits 
sounds on other OS's, so I know everything is hooked up.