A bit of both, but the E-mu was for the breakout box to do audio recording for the animations I was working on. Still have the card and software, so it may be going into another audio specific system in the future. Sound Blaster isn't the recommended, but at least I know the points of distortion. Currently have a 2 port M-audio with the laptop for portable recording (good enough for foley basics and speech, depending on the mic), and a Behringer 4 port for the office box. Still need to get my foam baffles to cover the echo points, but that is down the road a bit.

All the hardware I get -is- Linux capable; its been years, but the command line doesn't scare me like it does so many. But you have to admit that the development of a shell to run programs not Linux native is spotty at best. I despise the pay to play model as much as most geeks do, but until things change, its either minimize the threat or do without.