I am a Linux newbie, and I have an aureal soundcard in my pc, i have just installed Linux, mounted the CD-ROM and the cd is playing but no sound is heard. I assume this means i have to install the soundcard in Linux but have no idea how to do this, can anyone help???

Hmmm. I don't know whether that card is supported or not. Anyway, try this. If you're in X windows, bring up the terminal window and type: init 3 This will dump you out of X and to the command prompt. Note that you'll have to log in again. At the command prompt, type sndconfig This will start the sound configuration program. If it runs successfully you will hear some sample sounds being played. If that doesn't work, then check out the Linux compatibility list to see if your card is supported.

Last time I tried, my aureal vortex 2 card was unsupported. However, this was a little while back, so maybe you'll have better luck. If it won't work, sndconfig will tell you.

I had one working (RH7.2), moved the computer and can't seem to get any sound out of it. Sounndconf detects the card and says it's fine. I've checked connections etc but can't seem to figure out the problem. Perhaps there is something I have inadvertantly switched off. Any help?

Cd playback doesn't really need soundcard support (on most soundcards anyway, aureal may be different). The cd audio is just tunneled through the soundcard to the card's output jack. All you need is to set the cd volume to a sane value. If the cd volume is muted however, you do need soundcard support to change that... As for soundcards not working, it may be a permissions problem in /dev/dsp and /dev/mixer. Make them world writeable.