Besides the problems what I've reported in bug #79659 (please take a look), I've found some more causes of trouble: - building alsa: I think that the correct thing to do is: first install the knew kernel, after that compile the alsa libraries and tools (so that the alsa headers and drivers in the kernel are used) However, after booting with the new kernel, the line emerge -a alsa-lib alsa-utils alsa-tools alsa-headers alsa-oss suggested in the documentation did not work for me. (the reason is that alsa-headers depend on alsa-driver, and alsa-driver is already built in the kernel!, and the alsa-headers are in the kernel headers, so they are not needed) To overcome this difficulty, I had to add two lines media-sound/alsa-driver-1.0.8 media-sound/alsa-headers-1.0.8_rc1 to /etc/portage/profile/package.provided so that portage knows that they are already provided. - Another problem was that I'm using a serial mouse, so its name under udev is /dev/tts/0 (it used to be /dev/ttyS0), I suggest adding a note about this to the section entitled "X11 config file should now use /dev/input/mice for PS/2 and USB mice" and change off course that title. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
alsa-header doesn't (R)DEPEND on alsa-driver; they are however required as they are a hard dependency of alsa-libs. I've put some information regarding the serial-mouse to the guide.
