The ThinkPad 390E uses the ESS Solo-1 chipset for audio. At the time of writing, there are three options for getting sound happily working under Linux.

• NEW! Kernel sound support. Kernel 2.2.12 (less than one day old) has an experimental kernel module for the ESS Solo-1 (esssolo1.o). I have built 2.2.12 with nothing more than the "Sound Support in Linux" option and the "ESS Solo-1" option (configuration screenshot here), and basic sound functionality appears to be working. I can play music CD's, play MP3's, wav's, au's, and view Quicktime/AVI/MPEG movies. However, applications that use ULaw like xboing (and RealAudio G2?) seem to be broken, as you can't just cat audio files to /dev/audio with this driver. The sound quality is a bit harsh as compared to the OSS/Linux and ALSA drivers, below. The driver does not handle suspend-resume cycles, but unloading and reloading the esssolo1 module after resuming works fine. This driver is experimental, but it's quite usable, and it appears to be on the right track. If support improves, standard Linux distributions like Redhat will soon be able to support sound with the ESS Solo-1 right out of the box.

• OSS/Linux Sound Support. Although not free or "open" by GPL'ed Linux standards, the folks at OSS include excellent ESS Solo-1 support in OSS/Linux. Currently this is the best-functioning sound support option for the ThinkPad 390E, IMHO. It simply works! You can even apply OSS/Linux to the stock Redhat 6.0 kernel without recompiling. However... while inexpensive, it's not free. If you compile the latest and greatest kernel, you may need to wait a few days until an OSS binary patch for that kernel is released (unless you modify the kernel source and change the reported kernel version). Also, the OSS sound module takes up a significant amount of memory (about 500 KB), although it can be easily loaded and unloaded from memory. The new stock kernel driver takes less than 30 KB to load, by comparison.

• ALSA Drivers. The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture project (ALSA) is writing an open-source alternative API for sound under Linux. They include drivers for the ESS Solo-1. But while they look great on paper, I've had much more difficulty getting ALSA working, and even with OSS compatibility modules loaded, a lot of applications seem to break with ALSA (x11amp, xanim, gmix, etc.). Perhaps others have gotten it to work with the ESS Solo-1, but frankly I'm very happy with OSS. It's a 2 minute install, and it just works. I would be interested in a step-by-step description of getting ALSA sound really working on the ThinkPad 390E. Allin Cottrell has written the best one I've seen thus far.

Driver Type	Functionality	Cost	Ease of Installation
Kernel 2.2.12+ Modules	Functional, experimental sound support	Free	Requires compiling the latest kernel
OSS/Linux Modules	Very complete. Full-duplex, PCM, MIDI, etc...	$20	Easy, autodetecting installation
ALSA Drivers	Very complete! -- But incompatible with many existing applications	Free	Laborious! (begs for an RPM distribution)

Audio-Related Comments

The 390E has "sufficient" speakers, but only marginally so. There is not much audio power, and little bass response. On the other hand, I've not heard a single laptop with good audio. This is the one single aspect of the 390E which is merely "average". The quality of the audio output, however, when routed to a real amplifier/speaker system, is excellent.

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