my cable modem again and my sound

I have just looked through the suse drivers and it appears that my NIC is not listed. I haven/t checked the module disk so it may be there but I am not sure. I can download the driver from 3com's website. My question is how the heck do I get the driver onto my system after I download the driver to my hard disk. Another question I have is how do I check to see if my sound works or not, and if it does not work how do I get linux to use my sound card. I have a soundblaster live which is deffinitely supported by linux since this computer is like a month old or maybe less.