i've been using the alsa guide to get alsa up and running as a first-time gentoo user. the first thing i want to be sure to say is thank you for all of the amazing documentation on setting up everything - i have learned so much about linux through this process, and it's made me more interested in every aspect. that being said, i have two suggestions for improving the alsa guide specifically that come from things that cost me a lot of time and effort. the first one is about adding 'ALSA_CARDS="emu10k1"' to /etc/make.conf. as of right now it is in the guide, but it is in a section which a person would skip over if they were using kernel 2.6 and installed the modules for the sound card while compiling the kernel. the second problem that i had that cost me a couple of weeks was that the guide instructs you how to recompile things for the kernel, but then doesn't mention that if you compiled some new things into the kernel, and didn't just use modules for everything, you next need to copy some files into the boot partition and reboot into the new kernel before trying to start alsasound or alter the module configurations. thanks again for all the documentation though, for the most part it is really amazing. matt shanley (arkadyan on irc)
I've rewritten the ALSA instructions a bit, see http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/draft/desktop.xml. Both comments should be fixed by this.
