ALSA stands for Advanced Linux Sound Architecture. This is the project that provides almost all the sound drivers in Linux which makes it possible to play all those music mp3's you have hoarded on your harddisk. A few years back, when I tried to install Linux on my machine, I had run into problems because Linux failed to detect my sound card. And I had to tweak the system to get the sound card to work. That was when I came to realize the important part played by ALSA project. Prior to ALSA, sound card drivers were supplied by another project called OSS (Open Sound System). But since then sound support in Linux has improved considerably to the extent that the user is not faced with the task of tweaking the configuration files. Nowadays, Linux users are shielded from such problems because the sound works out of the box.
Dave Phillips has written a very useful guide titled "A User's Guide to ALSA" which takes an in depth view of configuring ALSA on Linux. This guide will be helpful for people who still have sound problems in Linux. After reading the article, I realized that these were more or less the same steps I had taken in getting my sound card detected in Linux. But at that time I had to expend a lot of effort to figure out the solution.
Dave has done a very good job in writing this article which I find quite useful for people who still have problem in detecting their sound card in Linux.
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