Well, after 3 days of downloading stuff and reading FAQs and manuals that barely made sence to me (being an MCSE/CCNP type person) I got Slackware installed on my computer, and XFree86 (I know what that is now!!!) seems to be configured properly. I have one question though, how do I get my sound card to work? I have a crappy on-board Creative CT5880. My mobo is a GA-7ZXR. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

~Raskall

Do an "lspci", and get the name of the chipset for your on-board sound.
Then open /etc/rc.d/rc.modules in a text editor, scroll down to the sound-support section and uncomment one of the modules that looks relevant.
If you're not familiar with editors like vi, joe etc. and you installed Midnight Commander (mc), then just use "mcedit" or "mcedit -c" in an xterm.
Some soundcards require "pre-install" and "post-install" commands in /etc/modules.conf for extra stuff like wavetable support. I usually grep around in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/sound for info on that before trying google.com.

Wow, I'm learning a lot playing with this stuff...

Ok, I ran lspci and it said I have an "Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI (Rev02)". A search on google told me that the es1371 driver should work. I uncommented the modprobe es1371 line in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules (woohoo I used VI!!), and chmod 777 /dev/dsp, but I'm still not getting any sound. I was starting to think something wasn't plugged in right, but I still get sound in XP. What can I check next? The docs mentioned above said to check the kernel log to see if the driver was loading properly, but I'm not sure how to do that one...

Check the debug messages when Linux starts up or just type "dmesg" to see what happened when the es1371 module was loaded (use <shift><pageup> in bash or "dmesg | more" or even "dmesg | grep audio" ). You can also do an "lsmod" to check if "soundcore" etc. are present.

I agree with fskmh on the last reply, when your box starts up it will throw you an error message that it can't modprobe whatever for that card if it can't find it, other than that you should see some kind of a pat on the back telling you the module loaded (give yourself a cookie)...Then log in and see if you can play something, using xmms? mpg123? Check your voulme levels too, not sure what wm you're using (KDE, Gnome, E, etc.) you could run kmix or the sort. Generally when I start up my TV Tuner is blaring and other volume levels are rather low sometimes, so be sure to check that.

Sorry for taking up your guy's time with what's probably a simple problem, but it's still not working. I rebooted, and checked the log. There's nothing that looks like an error. I turned the volume all the way up from within X. I'm using GQmpeg to test this out. There's not errors that come up when I try to play the mp3, but no sound either... I'm kinda at a loss here. This is the stuff I found in the logs that appears to apply...

es1371: version v0.30 time 00:45:14 May 31 2002
PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 00:0e.0
es1371: found chip, vendor id 0x1274 device id 0x5880 revision 0x02
es1371: found es1371 rev 2 at io 0xc800 irq 9
es1371: features: joystick 0x0
ac97_codec: AC97 Audio codec, id: 0x8384:0x7608 (SigmaTel STAC9708)

I'm not sure if this is relavant, but I'm getting a lot of GTK in the background when I'm running x.

Open up your mixer and check the volume and mute controls, also do "ls -l /dev/dsp*" and post the results.

I checked the mixer and all the volumes are maxed. One of the first things I checked was the permissions on /dev/dsp. It's set to 777 right now. That should work right?

"chmod 666" (rw-rw-rw) is what I have mine set to, you will also have to set the same permissions for /dev/mixer*, /dev/audio* /dev/sequencer* and /dev/midi*.

if you've got a pure wave file there, grab it and do this:

cp /path/to/wave /dev/dsp

that'll play the wave file from the CLI and GUI...its a good little test..

what program are you using to run the mp3?

I've tried using gqmpeg and the cd player to play sound (all from within x). I didn't know I needed to chmod mixer, sequencer, and midi. I'll try that and playing a file from the command line. Sound on from the command line?!? That's a really new idea to a Windows guy

Ok, I tried changing the permissions on /dev/mixer*, /dev/audio* /dev/sequencer* and /dev/midi* (as well as dsp). When I run the cp anything.wav /dev/dsp, the cursor goes to the next line, and then blinks. It stays there until I Ctrl-C out.

Raskall,

Since you changed the permissions in /dev/seq, midi, etc,
see if you can start you cdrom after you startx KDE or GNOME
if you installed them. Just place a music cd in the cdrom and
try to play it. If you have not set the permissions right (as root)
you should get an error message. Let us know if you get any
errors. Hope this helped. Cheers!

I think it was a problem with the mixer I was using... I installed the ALSA drivers and it started working right away. Woohoo!! Thanks for your help guys.