System Architecture: Intel
RedHat Release: RHL 5.1 (Manhattan)
FAQ Category: Sound and Music
Modification Date: Oct 19, 1998

Question:

How do I setup sound on RedHat 5.x?

Answer:

Thanks to the excellent work done by Alan Cox, RedHat 5.x comes
with a modular sound driver for several cards including the
soundblaster series.  Sound may be setup using several methods:

  sndconfig (RTFM man page)
  a shell script
  OSS sound drivers

An example of setting up sound via a script is:
    #!/bin/bash
    #/sbin/insmod sb io=0x240 irq=9 dma=3 dma16=5 mpu_io=0x300

OSS sound drivers may be obtained from http:/www.opensound.com
and are commercial drivers for Linux and other flavors of UNIX.
These are easy to setup and stable, but are commercial (hence $).
For more difficult setups, OSS may be your best bet (e.g., a system
with a lot of hardware, or multiple sound cards).

WARNING:  If you don't get the I/O, IRQ, and DMA setup at the
proper addresses, your system may not operate properly or may
have stability problems.

Note, Linux will support multiple sound cards (but unless they
are jumpered cards, they will probably have to be different 
model cards, e.g., one Soundblaster, one Gravis).

References:

http://www.opensound.com