# Best 5.1 sound card for Linux?



## mab1376 (Nov 4, 2008)

As most of you who use Linux and have an X-Fi are aware it does not work.

You can make it work with OSS which requires removing ALSA (the primary sound system of many distros)

Is there are good 5.1 sound cards that will be detected and work properly under ALSA?

Any input is appreciated. Even if someone has found a more streamlined way of removing ALSA and installing OSS please let me know.

At the moment I'm running Ubuntu 8.10.


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## DIBL (Nov 4, 2008)

You can check the ALSA site here and see which cards are supported:

http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Main

AFAIK, you can 
	
	



```
sudo apt-get remove --purge alsa*
```
 and strip all ALSA packages off your system, if you want to do that.  I haven't tried it, though.


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## mab1376 (Nov 4, 2008)

I've done that before, but whatever residual remnants of ALSA were left made for some interesting problems.


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## DIBL (Nov 4, 2008)

Are you sure ALSA has to be removed to use OSS?  I seem to recall using OSS (not for X-Fi, however) and it can work with ALSA still installed on the system.  I think it was Audacity -- lets you set the sound system for each sound device, IIRC.


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## johnnyfiive (Nov 4, 2008)

how about anyone that works.


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## Wile E (Nov 5, 2008)

My Audigy 2 ZS works fine under ALSA.


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## xfire (Nov 5, 2008)

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=63828


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## mab1376 (Nov 5, 2008)

i could never get those to work.


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## Katanai (Nov 6, 2008)

From my own experience Ubuntu is a POS. Maybe your best bet would be to change to another distro.


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## Wile E (Nov 6, 2008)

Katanai said:


> From my own experience Ubuntu is a POS. Maybe your best bet would be to change to another distro.



I wouldn't say it's a POS, but there are definitely better out there. I prefer Fedora, personally.


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## mab1376 (Nov 6, 2008)

personally i feel debian based distros are the way to go, I've tried dreamlinux, but i didn't like it as much, Fedora just doesn't appeal to me unless im using it for a server, I've setup a nagios/cacti server running fedora at my job which i think is fantastic.


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## Wile E (Nov 6, 2008)

I'm not a fan of Debian distros. I prefer rpm distros, they tend to be more compatible with things you find in the wild, as you are now finding out.


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## mab1376 (Nov 7, 2008)

yaay

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=creative_xfi_gift&num=1

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=132288



> Quick install
> 
> =============
> In terminal,
> ...


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