Matthew> I first tried linux using a knoppix install, and while it was great to Matthew> get my feet wet it was horrible to get music apps and midi going on. Matthew> Agnula makes most of theat pain go away I hear (I havent actually used Matthew> it) http://www.agnula.org/. I just went through the knoppix thing, and here's what I learned. I don't know whether any of these issues are relevant to the OP. You have to specify alsa on the boot command line to run alsa. It sounds like he got past that one. I have an SBLive, and Knoppix for some reason insists on using the Creative driver rather than the current Alsa one, so some things still didn't work. In order to get the driver you want instead of the driver you don't want, there are two things you have to do: replace the bad driver in /etc/modules-<kernel version> put the bad driver onto /etc/hotplug/blacklist There's some reason why you can't just replace the Knoppix kernel with another version via apt-get, so I have finally (after almost 10 years of being a LINUX user) been driven to learn to build my own kernels. You start with the configuration in /boot/config.<kernel version>, and then change whatever you think you need to. This is probably the best way to get rid of all that legacy OSS stuff you don't want to have to deal with. Matthew> I am sure, however that some of our local debian masters will be able Matthew> to hook you up though. I'm actually still not configured enough to run sequencers (timidity is good enough for me), but my guess is that if you get as far as I have, the advice on the internet and from the local Debian masters will give you what you want. -- Laura (mailto:lconrad@laymusic.org , http://www.laymusic.org/ ) (617) 661-8097 fax: (501) 641-5011 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139