Sound Blaster XFi series and Alsa
If you see on official home page, the XFi sound card series of creative are supported only on version 1.0.21 of Linux sound library (ALSA).
Ubuntu 9.04 have an older version does have an older version. Ubuntu 9.10 does have the driver, so if you have upgraded or installed this version, you can freely close this page.
For obtaining it work, so, you need to get the official drivers from creative site that appears to be opensource from 2008.
I tried to compile the beta version of the driver (before 2008): it was really hard and I did not been able to made it. As we can see in date 06/11/08, creative made official release.
Unfortunately, there are only sources packages, so you need to compile it for getting it works.
Prerequisites
For compiling it you need the kernel headers and Makefile utility (both included in the system).
Linux kernel has a protection that does not load the drivers (modules) compiled with different version of gcc of the one used to compile the kernel, so the binary deb, rpm o tgz package made with checkinstall or by hand will not be portable between releases.
The driver does not support DKMS System, so it will be recompiled after installation of new kernels.
How To
You need to unpack the kernel module source: right click on it and select extract with ark Now you have to open a console prompt, bring yourself into the directory containing the sources and make a classical build with
make sudo make install
On ubuntu 9,04 system the module will be loaded automatically after installation.
Changelog
30/10/09: Updated informations on kubuntu 9.10 22/10/09: Changed some imprecisions and unreal things. 20/10/09: Initial version