Sound was easy with alsa. I simply ran (as root) alsaconf and hit enter a couple of times :) The end result was a few lines added to /etc/modules.conf which read:

alias char-major-116 snd
alias snd-card-0 snd-card-cs4231
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
options snd snd_major=116 snd_cards_limit=1
options snd-card-cs4231 snd_id=card1 snd_index=0 snd_port=0x530
snd_dma1=1 snd_dma2=3 snd_irq=5
I suspect that simply adding these lines to /etc/modules.conf would bring the sound into useful complience, oh, you also have to do an rcalsasound start to activate the sound card. This is done automagically by alsaconf.

Please note

The above was for my previous SuSE configuration, I am still playing with sound in Debian, it's not quite the same as SuSE and I am "not there yet" in configuring it. As soon as I am happy with the config in Debian, I will update this page with the new info.