well the sound did work from the beginning but only as OSS (as far as i understand these things)

i know i need alsa for the low-latency audio which i want for my audio apps, so i searched synaptic for "alsa" and ended up selecting alsa-base, alsa-utils and alsa-modules-2.4.27-1-686.
i dont remember which one went wrong but the error message was something like "you cant do that bacause knx-alsa is using something at the moment" or somehting like that.

so i removed knx-alsa (before that i didnt even know it existed) cause i thought its some kind of stripped down knoppix alsa without full functionality and/or questionable upgradeability and i tried to install normal alsa.

again i selected packages alsa-base, alsa-utils and alsa-modules-2.4.27-1-686
and the alsa-modules failed to install with:

Code:
FATAL: Could not open '/boot/System.map-2.4.27-1-686': No such file or directory
but i guess that means the module is for 2.4 kernel and since im running a 2.6 thats nothing bad.
alsa-base and alsa-modules installed fine.

then i ran alsaconf (is that okay? or should i just reboot the computer without alsa-conf?) and it found my soudcard (prompted me to select) and in the end of alsaconf:
Code:
Running update-modules...
Loading driver...
Starting ALSA.../etc/init.d/alsa: Error: alsactl restore failed with message 'alsactl: load_state:1134: No soundcards found...'.
done.
Setting default volumes...
Saving the mixer setup used for this in /var/lib/alsa/asound.state.
/usr/sbin/alsactl: save_state:1061: No soundcards found...

===============================================================================

 Now ALSA is ready to use.
 For adjustment of volumes, use your favorite mixer.

 Have a lot of fun!
lot of fun my ass!

i tried what you suggested but i dont seem to have an alsa_init executable.

and my problem isnt a "no sound" problem, its a "cant get alsa to run" problem