If you have a sound card in your computer, i.e. if it can say more than an occasional beep, say Y. Be sure to have all the information about your sound card and its configuration down (I/O port, interrupt and DMA channel), because you will be asked for it. You want to read the Sound-HOWTO, available from <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. General information about the modular sound system is contained in the files <file:Documentation/sound/oss/Introduction>. The file <file:Documentation/sound/oss/README.OSS> contains some slightly outdated but still useful information as well. Newer sound driver documentation is found in <file:Documentation/sound/alsa/*>. If you have a PnP sound card and you want to configure it at boot time using the ISA PnP tools (read <http://www.roestock.demon.co.uk/isapnptools/>), then you need to compile the sound card support as a module and load that module after the PnP configuration is finished. To do this, choose M here and read <file:Documentation/sound/oss/README.modules>; the module will be called soundcore.
With this option enabled, the kernel will claim all OSS device numbers if any OSS support (native or emulation) is enabled whether the respective module is loaded or not and try to load the appropriate module using sound-slot/service-* and char-major-* module aliases when one of the device numbers is opened. With this option disabled, kernel will only claim actually in-use device numbers and opening a missing device will generate only the standard char-major-* aliases. The only visible difference is use of additional module aliases and whether OSS sound devices appear multiple times in /proc/devices. sound-slot/service-* module aliases are scheduled to be removed (ie. PRECLAIM won't be available) and this option is to make the transition easier. This option can be overridden during boot using the kernel parameter soundcore.preclaim_oss. Disabling this allows alternative OSS implementations. Please read Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt for details. If unsure, say Y.
Say 'Y' or 'M' to enable ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture), the new base sound system. For more information, see <http://www.alsa-project.org/>
Say 'Y' or 'M' to enable Open Sound System drivers.
This is used to avoid config and link hard dependencies between the sound subsystem and other function drivers completely unrelated to sound although they're sharing the AC97 bus. Concerned drivers should "select" this.