I'd like to upgrade to something a bit better than my dodgy onboard audio in the hope of mabye getting a better sound.

Looking at the Creative Sound Blaster Live 24.Bit, 7.1($50 AUD)
and the Creative Audigy 2 Value, 24.Bit, 7.1 Surround ($100 AUD)

I'm using Debian Sarge with the 2.6 kernel and currently use ALSA for sound.
Not that it matters but my speakers are Logitech X-530 5.1 (they were cheap ;P Just gotta wait for XMMS's eq to be fixed so I can turn down the sub)

I'm rather limited for money though and I doubt I'll be able to get a refund if it doesn't work fully in linux.
Would anyone be able to tell me how well all the features of the cards are supported?
(Back on my SoundBlaster PCi vibra 128 I could never get more than one program to play sound at the same time)
Is it worth paying twice as much for the Audigy 2 Value?
If there's any Audophiles there would you be able to tell me wether you think it's worth upgdading to one of these cards? (I'm currently usuing dodgy onboard 5.1 audio. The kind where if you turn up the volume you can hear noise when the mouse moves and the cpu is active)

Thanks

I have use the Soundblaster Live 5.1 on Debian Sarge and it works fine.

I use the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value. It also works great with Alsa and supports hardware mixing (playing more than one sound at a time). I only use headphones at the moment so I don't know how well surround sound works (that probably doesn't help you decide). You could also take a look at the HCL entries for the cards as well as the listings on the alsa website.