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Linux ALSA patch for better sound support

Posted: 10 May 2009, 17:13
by chris
The sound hardware in the NC10 does not work perfectly under Linux. Some recent distributions work better than others, but there are still some issues.

I made a patch to (almost) fully support the NC10 audio hardware:
http://users.skynet.be/chrisp/linux/sam ... linux.html

You might need a little bit of kernel configuration / compiling experience. Feedback is welcomed .

RE: Linux ALSA patch for better sound support

Posted: 10 May 2009, 17:24
by voria
Thank you!
I will test it as soon as I can! :)

RE: Linux ALSA patch for better sound support

Posted: 10 May 2009, 18:18
by voria
Just tried it against alsa-driver-1.0.20, it works great!
I'm uploading right now a new package on my repository, here is the changelog:

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alsa-driver (1.0.20~ppa1~nc10~jaunty) jaunty; urgency=low

  * Updated alsa sources to version 1.0.20.
  * Applied 'alsa20090509-add-nc10-support.patch' (thanks to Chris Pockelé)
Thank you again!

RE: Linux ALSA patch for better sound support

Posted: 11 May 2009, 21:32
by chris
That's nice.
I just updated the patch, according to comments from the ALSA maintainers (see alsa-devel maling list for details).
I don't think it's necessary to make a new package though. Biggest change is the names of the "Mic Boost" settings.

RE: Linux ALSA patch for better sound support

Posted: 17 May 2009, 22:00
by voria
I've seen your patch has been merged in the official alsa development tree.
Thanks again for your awesome work!

The only problem (not regarding your patch in any way) is that at the moment there are no good solutions for using it on ubuntu jaunty. For me, any newer alsa driver than the 1.0.18 kills pulseaudio (0.9.14) after a while I'm listening to music or watching a video. And I can't get the newer pulseaudio to work as I want (well, I did not tried too hard, get bored of it before :P).
For anyone interested, this is the reason why on my repository the latest 'alsa-modules' is 1.0.18 yet. However, I'm providing alsa 1.0.20 packages from daily snapshots on my testing repository.

Just for curiosity, what distro and pulseaudio version are you using to get clean and stable sound on your NC10?

RE: Linux ALSA patch for better sound support

Posted: 08 Jul 2009, 07:15
by nero23666
There was a sound lib update a few days ago. Now my sound doesnt work anymore. I found several sollutions for it but none of them worked for me (i have the n110). does anyone have on right way or has it to be tested with every single way in order to have one proper way.
i have alsa packages and pulse packages installed, so i dont really know what is used right now.
i would appreciate if anyne could help me.

RE: Linux ALSA patch for better sound support

Posted: 11 Jul 2009, 18:36
by zinaf
I can confirm the what nero23666 posted. after the update there were some substantial changes. now skype does not work and the options are different. I have not played much around with it but from first attempt nothing seemed to work.
:(
'nero23666' pid='1579' dateline='1247033754' wrote: There was a sound lib update a few days ago. Now my sound doesnt work anymore. I found several sollutions for it but none of them worked for me (i have the n110). does anyone have on right way or has it to be tested with every single way in order to have one proper way.
i have alsa packages and pulse packages installed, so i dont really know what is used right now.
i would appreciate if anyne could help me.

RE: Linux ALSA patch for better sound support

Posted: 12 Jul 2009, 23:43
by voria
Are you using kernel 2.6.30 from my repository?
It' causing a lot of problems lately, sometimes I get kernel panics with it (mostly during shutdown process), and I'm considering to remove it definitely from the repository.

At the moment I'm using the latest kernel from karmic repository (2.6.31-2), taken directly from here. It already contains newer alsa modules (so, no need to install any extra 'alsa-modules' package to get full support for NC10's sound card) and a newer 'ath5k' module with rfkill support already in (so, no need to install 'linux-backports-modules' anymore). Also, it's far more stable than the 2.6.30* from my repository (I'm testing it for some days now, no problems at all until now). Give it a shot.

Please note that it ships with KMS enabled by default, causing problems with screen backlight control.
You can disable it by creating a new .conf file in /etc/modprobe.d/ (for example, '/etc/modprobe.d/kms.conf') containing this line:

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options i915 modeset=0
or, alternatively, by adding the option 'nomodeset' to the kernel command line.

Let me know if the new kernel solves your problem.

PS: The webcam support is broken yet, even in this new kernel.