Hmm,
What's the chipset on your sound card? I looked up the Sigmatel cards, there are several different ones.
http://www.sigmatel.com/products/audio-codecs.htm
Looks like they have drivers for linux too.
Does ALSA find anything when you run alsaconf? Is this a PCI sound card or older ISA?
I looked on the HCL here and found this:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/sh...&cat=83&page=1
If alsaconf finds nothing, check /etc/rc.d/rc.modules for the chipset listed in that HCL entry.
About the "generic how-to's", this might help.
http://cabibbo.physics.wm.edu/~bryan...piron5100.html
That article covers fedora/RH, I only know slackware, but if RH sticks to standards, that article should help.
Another article on the model of laptop you have:
http://web.utk.edu/~rmahurin/inspiron5100/
http://www.linuxvirgins.com/inspiron5100.html
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/dell.html (scroll down to the 5100, few articles listed)
About your video card, I've never used ATI and the track record with their linux support hasn't been great. Here's what I've found:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...003/04/1/53349
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/...e&folderID=300
Good luck,
-Jason