How to enable a device in Linux

[jmnew]

How can I enable and disable devices in Linux. I have 2 sound cards. I have disabled one in windows and found it was also disabled in Linux as well. I would like to be able to switch between the 2 as I am experimenting with each of them. I am running Linux Mint Cinnamon and Ubuntu 18.10. My sound cards are Realtek AL C883 and C-Media CM18738/C3DX.
Thanx so much.
Jim

[Jaytee]

Hi Jim,
Gee! I not had the heart aches of setting up sound cards for many years
The short way I would suggest is go to the sound icon in the bottom right area, right click sound preferences click the hardware tab and you should be able to select A onboard sound or one of the sound cards.
Should that not work open a terminal type dmesg lots of out put quickly scroll through and look for error messages (in red text) no errors on sound card you have a fair bit of reading to do searching the brand name may be fruitless as dmesg reports chipsets given a result or not and type top
you will get a list of the main programs each has a process id (PID) note the number of the 2 cards then to kill one type killpid nnnn not sure how to un kill the thing other than a reboot.

[jmnew]

I figured it out. In the app all I had to was select the sound card I wanted to use. I did not realize it was that easy. It was literally staring me right in the face. So much easier than windows with the whole control panel thing. Once again thanks for coming to my rescue Jaytee.
Jim

[Jaytee]

Good outcome Jim.