Installing ALSA 1.0.6
 

How involved of a task is installing a newer version of ALSA? I have ALSA 1.0.3 for SuSE 9.1 and as I understand ALSA has since added support for the Dell SB Live cards like mine. Should I check to see if SuSE will eventually offer the upgrade? Might this involve custom compilation of my kernel?

I haven't found any information specific enough, and I don't dare fully undertake this quest until I know what I'm getting into. I actually want to do this more as a challenge than to get the sound to work.

I believe that the newer version will overwrite the older version. When you go to www.alsa-project.org select the list of cards and you will see "details" as a link. Click it and it takes you to pretty detailed install instructions. It really is pretty straightforward.

I am currently working on the same problme and making some progress - did you have any luck?

I tried to upgrade from alsa 1.0.3 to 1.0.6 to get my Soundblaster Live! from Dell running, too. After many hours of reading and trying, it is still not working.
Here's a link to a thread in which you will find some of the problems I had so far. If you have some hints, please let me know. Currently I'm reluctant to mess with my kernel as I am not experienced in Linux and I don't want to crash the system.

After getting ALSA 1.06 installed and still having the same error I decided to take the easy way out for now. I bought a $12.95 sound card and hooked it up. It installed fine (only gliche was making sure to delete the attempt at old sound card first).