I have yet to receive my copy of 5.3, but I'm in shock about the apparent decision to deemphasize sound modules in favor of commercial OSS drivers. I think, however, that this reflects on a grave drawback in the current GNU/Linux scene: namely, the lamentable state of its support of soundcards. Yes, users are free to use the open-sourced isapnp. But that's an absurdity in itself. The ISA standard is loosing ground by the hour, and OEMs are pulling their ISA slots right and left. As anybody knows, pci (and, unfortunately, AGP) is the wave of the future. Still, I have yet to see a Linux utility called "pcipnp" available in any distribution, and configuring soundcards remains a knotty problem. How can GNU/Linux ever expect to make serious inroads into the M--S---T market if one of today's most important computer peripherals receives such deficient support? Currently, far too many users must turn to OSS, supporting drivers which, no offense to the company or its products, are contrary to open source and free software ideals. Is there any hope for this situation? -- Glenn -- - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e