SOUND CARDS IN LINUX
In Windows, when you put in a soundcard, Windows will start up and say "new hardware detected", and prompt you for an installation disk. You'll provide one. You might have to type in the name of the directory of the CDROM that the driver files are to be copied from. Files will be copied and you'll be told that you must restart your computer for the new settings to take effect.

In RedHat Linux, it's a snap in many cases. From the command line, type 'sndconfig'. Or type 'setup' and then choose the soundcard configuration tool from the menu. Many plug and play cards will be automatically detected. If not, you may have to supply parameters (base address, IRQ, DMA, etc.) Then you listen to two tests, which confirm the configuration. No rebooting! Soundblaster 16 will install just like that, but some more sophisticated PCI cards like SoundBlaster Live are trickier to set up.