Negative. All of this used to be right not too long ago, but since 2.2 times it is a bit different, mostly because the machines are bigger (RAM) and faster but the kernel-used memory is nearly the same. As long as no sound card is initialized and no sound kernel module is loaded, the driver doesn't consume any resources (apart from the diskspace for the kernel module). Basically the same is valid for scsi host adapters and other stuff. The memory consumed by kernel code will remain the same.
Ok. If you install a kernel with modul support it doesn't consume memory or performance until the module is really used and loaded. That's clear. But what about driver or other things compiled directly into the kernel, so that the kernel grows ? Does this also has no effect on the kernel performance, e.g packet filtering, traffic management,... ? Bye Markus