How you choose which sound card to buy for recording? I think we should choose only those manufacturers who supports free software anyway. Unfortunely i had an issues with some of Creative devices although there was declared support for most Creative devices: http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Main .
Please search on the web or in this forum, this topic has been discussed a hundred times and the results are pretty static (get an RME, M-Audio or crap).