With regard to the sound driver, the es18xx does endless looping on the first second or so of sound on my box (a PWS500au) unless I apply my patch, which just enables the alternative interupt detection code in the driver. Even then, though, I believe it still only works in 8bit mode.
The sb8 driver also works for me. For this reason, I basically decided to forget about my es18xx patch. It doesn't get me anything the sb8 driver doesn't give me, and it forces me to keep compiling my own kernels.
Cheers! -Tyson
PS: The Debian 2.6.24 kernel actually panicked on me (instead of infinitely looping on the first second of sound) when I tried the stock es18xx driver.