[Lvlug] Almost there...lacking Sound and Printing

[Paul Ryan]

Hello all,

For those interested in the progress of my conversion from the corporate XP
desktop to Slackware GUI ("Long time Slackware CLI user embraces GUI"), things
are looking positive.  I now spend about 15 minutes a day booted into XP to do
printing and to run one program for which I lack a Linux equivalent.  The
remainder I spend in Slack, my happy place...

I find the fvwm desktop to my liking.  I'm amazed at how rapidly it loads
compared to kde or gnome.  And I can make it a lightweight as possible.  Just
run a set of mini-buttons and I've tailored them to include only my browser
(Moz1.6), address book, organizer, notes, kspread, xpdf,and pilot sync (all
borrowed from KDE!) and, of course, mc in an xterm.  Guess that's my CLI,
nothing excess, "only use what you have to" mentallity at work!

Now for the negatives.  I still lack two items on the Linux side - sound and
printing.  I've read the how-to and fought the ALSA battle for over a week,
but no success.  Likewise with printing, however printing isn't as
straightforward, since we have only networked printers and nothing is
connected to the desktop.

So, my question to the group is, "How does one proceed in a logical manner
toward getting sound and printing working?".
  
System: Dell Dimension 4550, Pentium 4 @ 2.66GHz, 512MB RAM, on board sound
which shows up, using lspci, as: 

02:02.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs [SB Live! Value] EMU10k1X
02:02.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs [SB Live! Value] Input device
controller


Eons ago, when I was an enlisted troop in the Air Force we had a manual called
a "dash three (-3)" for the aircraft I worked on.  It was a troubleshooting
tree that even a basic recruit could use to fix airborne weapons control
systems.  It was just a binary tree that started with "Perform step A", "Did
it work?" if "Yes", do step B, else do step C.  This was repeated over and
over until it worked you down to the defective box/component.  Wish we had
something similar for the Linux OS. :)

Paul