[PLUG] www.opensound.com

[Eric Harrison]

On 22 Jan 2004, none wrote:

>Why do you have to pay to use these drivers and license them on
>a card per card basis?  I'm trying to get the builtin Soundmaker
>Cadenza on my D845PEBT2 to work under Linux.  I'm extremely
>frustrated because I specifically picked this motherboard to be
>Linux compatible in the first place.  Does the organization 
>running www.opensound.com ever release versions of OSS under 
>the GPL?  Not only can I not find free drivers, Intel is 
>distributing the wrong ones for people using the D845PEBT2 
>under Linux.

>From a quick Google seach, it appears that you have four choices:
1) buy some stinking $20 close-source driver and have to spend
   at least another $20 within a year (not to mention the pain of
   getting a new driver version whenever you update/change your
   kernel)
2) buy a supported sound card ("real" Sound Blaster cards has 
   always "just worked" for me. ENU here in Portland sells them
   for as little as $16, you can probably mail order them for less).
   Odds are very good that a currently supported ~$10-20 sound card
   will be fully supported for more than one year ;-)
3) You can buy a new motherboard/cpu/memory setup with a supported
   onboard sound card (the most expensive possible solution)
4) "Silence is golden"
5) I may be wrong

<snip>
>If the sound card wasn't permanently integrated into the motherboard
>and case, I'd have jerked it and replaced with a Linux compatible one 
>a long time ago. 
<snip>

You can have multiple sound cards, just has you can have multiple
network or video cards. Usually you can disable the on-board sound
card in BIOS and the operating system will not be able to detect/see
it. Under Linux you can have multiple sound cards active and set
the default one by editing /etc/modules.conf.

>
>     --  Michael Robinson

Welcome back ;-)

-Eric