Tech Smartly

As I was setting up Mandriva, I ran into a small problem. No sound. Stepping into the big scary world of Linux, I have no knowledge of many things. Sure, everyone knows about “the spinning cube”, but what do you do if your sound doesn’t work? Having an X-Fi card, I didn’t want it to go to waste so I used my favorite Linux documentation site, Google. I plonk in X-fi Linux compatibility, and to my dismay, I find that there is no support. No sound at all in Linux? Could I really use linux if I could not even hear anything? I didn’t want to go back to windows, so I kept on looking.

One of the unfortunate parts of being a first time linux user (or at least the first time I’ve used it seriously), is requiring a step by step guide on how to do certain things. My terminal knowledge is a joke, I only know cd, ls, makedir, and su. It was a godsend that I found a page explaining exactly how to get X-Fi to work. Head over to Usefuls to find out how exactly to do so. Also, there are some interesting things to read at the blog, like how to easily copy and paste in linux, or jpeg vs. png. For those with X-Fi problems, and not using 64-bit, this will be helpful.

As for why I’m not using the drivers offered by creative, for some reason it thought that I was using 32-bit mandriva, and I don’t know why. Whatever the reason, I have my sound working now, thanks to Usefuls.