I took the box into the shop to verify that I installed my sound card ( SoundBlaster Live 5.1 ) correctly.

A unix technician there said that some linux distros don't have "plug and play" and that if you install new hardware the system might not detect it.

He gave up at first, but he claims that he found a script on the machine called "hwConfig". After he ran it and rebooted the machine sound was enabled.

Steve