Can't make it work. I have read a number of posts here that refer to the SB Live working well in Linux. The Icepack install claims to recognize and install the correct software but no sound at all.

I've tried ALSA and the regular driver & some other stuff that probably just made things really screwed up.

Thx.

Not meaning to be rude, but have you tried typing insmod emu10k1 before doing any sound stuff?

Not really, since I know nothing about the command insmod. However, the Icepack installer presumably installs the emu driver.

So, your suggestion is not rude but also not helpful since it doesn't inform me what the command is for or why I would want to type it.

Presumably, these GUI driven installs are designed to keep one from having to "learn linux" prior to attempting to use it.

That said, I got the SB Live working -- but I'm not sure what I did, if anything. I removed drivers, reinstalled drivers, etc. via the Icepack Installer interface. I called up three different mixers in the GUI (KDE) to see if the sound was simply turned down or off.

Sometimes these would not work. Sometimes one mixer would work but not another. The sound configuration device would not play a test sound and would "hang" for hours. It was pretty funny at 3:00 a.m. when the Konqueror browser crashed and suddenly the test sound came alive in an otherwise quite house!

So much for "Linux is way more stable than Windows" -- so far, I've had lots of crashes. Also, the linux install is a lot slower than the windows install on the same box (PII/64 megs.)

Now I'm trying to solve printing to a Windows network printer. Turns out the SMB backend is missing from the CUPS install. Icepack also appears to have installed things in non-standard locations, such as the SMB executables are all in /user/bin instead of user/samba or something.

Maybe I will try downloading and installing (reinstalling) CUPS. Another alternative is to use a different distribution -- I working on downloading Mandrake, but downloading three cds is pretty time consuming.

I decided to pay Icepack for support and maybe they will be able to help me out with some of this stuff. They haven't got back to me yet, though -- still processing my credit card.

Sorry for the brevity. Before now I've asked questions of people only to find that they're actually quite knowledgable on the topic and are still having problems, and so I came across as being quite rude.

Sound drivers are almost always made as modules, i.e. pieces of code that can be run (inserted into the kernel) at anytime and consequently stopped (removed from the kernel) at anytime, so that they do not need to be loaded (and therefore taking up memory) when they're not being used.

The main commands used with modules are:
insmod = insert module.
rmmod = remove module.
lsmod = list modules
modprobe = similar to insmod, but looks for anything else that has dependancies. For instance, you can't really just insmod emu10k1, because it alone is useless. You need to also load the modules sound, soundcore, and possible ac97_codec. However, modprobe emu10k1 should load all 3/4 of them.

I hope that's cleared up whatever mess I may have made.

I'm affraid I can't help on the printer front.

Yes, this info is quite helpful. I know a lot about windows, but getting up to speed on linux overnight is a handful. One reason I am trying to make the change is precisely because it has a lot more user control -- but that won't be useful until I learn how it works!