Got SUSE installed over the weekend. It's the first distro to recognize my ...ahem antique soundblaster 16 right off the bat. Okay, good. Problem is I get no output from my mp3 files or CDs. I DO have system sounds, though - meaning the various chimes and blurbs produced by various KDE apps or whatnot.

Do I need to download an ALSA driver? Or is the presence of "system" sounds an indication that the card is configured properly and the problem is somewhwere else?

Please do a basic search before posting... And the stickies often have very helpful advice. Though in this case even a basic google, or reading the info from which downloaded SuSE would tell you SuSE 10 as well as most distros do not work with mp3s or other copyrighted formats out of the box. You need to add that after install. Check the SuSE forum.

Had I searched for "mp3" I would have found what I was looking for. My apologies... I was thrown by the complete lack of sound from [I]any[I] media. However, in my defense, I have been plowing through the SUSE startup and reference guides, application manuals, every man page I can think of... and I am yet to find an explicit statement that mp3 or whatever format is not supported right out of the box. I have even found several glossary / definitions of mp3 in the documentation -that make no mention that it is not natively supported.

From the XMMS website:

"What is XMMS? XMMS is a multimedia player for unix systems. XMMS stands for X MultiMedia System and can play media files such as MP3, MOD's, WAV and others."

You can see why I had no idea what I was talking about. But believe me, I am most grateful for the help I receive from this forum. Had you not told me, I would probably still be searching for the wrong thing.

I understand. But the differences between Retail/Eval and OSS/OpenSuSE are listed on both novell.com, and opensuse.org(and .com). I wasn't trying to berate or belittle you, just let you know that while yes, there is a ton of stuff to get used to when coming to linux, and lots more to read, it is a sharp curve coming from Windows where you have been comfortable and knowledgable for a long time. The hardest part of the conversion is in essence, starting over, and paying close attention to detail. If you don't pay attention to detail, it makes the learning process much easier in the long run(trust me...it hurts skipping a few things which later you realize were the easy part if you looked closer)

I am glad you got everything sorted out. For future reference, SuSE, Fedora, and most other big name distrobutions have to come legally square, which sadly means, not at full capacity out of the box. It isn't a sign of weakness in the distro, but actually a sign the distro is big enough to merit being watched by governments and corporations for this kind of thing.

Welcome to the community.