TL;DR: I'm having issues with audio while using my 3.5mm port on my new laptop. I suspect the cause is a lack of proper drivers, which are present in Ubuntu and Pop!_OS.
I'm not sure if this is the proper place to post this, but Pop!_Planet and other System76 forums seem to be more focused on Pop!_OS rather than their hardware or other Linux things. I recently reached out to System76 support and am awaiting further instruction from them.
I've been distro hopping for a little bit on my new Lemur Pro laptop until I found Solus. I enjoyed it so much when I was trying it out with Budgie that I decided to install it on both my laptop and desktop. The only issue on my laptop would be the audio port. Because the Lemur Pro doesn't have the best internal speakers or microphone, I usually preferred using external speakers or headphones while messing around on Pop!_OS 20.04. Everything worked perfectly fine there, but when I moved to ArchLabs XFCE on a dual-boot, I found that there were issues with speakers when the laptop was charging (even after downloading the System76 firmware package from the AUR). Additionally, while using headphones on ArchLabs, the sound came out as what I could only describe as very soft and "tinny" -- the bass would conflict with treble tones and make listening to video and music quite unpleasant. Further, external microphones were simply out of the question as it seemed to only pick up whispers when I was shouting into my earbud mic at full gain. I went back to Pop!_OS on the dual-boot and found that the hardware was unaffected -- everything simply worked again. I started to suspect it was the DE not configuring things correctly since Gnome seems a bit more fleshed out for the user rather than XFCE or Spectrwm (which I was also trying out).
I found Solus and decided to try it out since ArchLabs didn't want to work well with Gnome-based DE's. I went with Budgie and instantly fell in love with the entire experience and how quick, streamlined, and stable everything felt. But the audio issues still remained. I decided to call it a day there since I was getting a little frustrated. Later, I replaced my entire system with Solus since everything else was pretty much perfect beside audio. I mean, it still is perfect on my old gaming desktop and I'm loving using it.
I checked on the System76 troubleshooting page and found this. Under the "Other Useful Commands" area, it lists the packages necessary to reinstall from the apt repository. Unfortunately, only three out of the five packages (alsa-base
alsa-utils
& pulseaudio
) are available in eopkg while the other two (linux-sound-base
& libasound2
) are in the Ubuntu repositories, but not available for Solus or Arch ( according to this and this ).
Since I'm still pretty new to Linux Desktop use (about three or four months of actually using Linux Desktop), I'd be a little nervous installing libraries and packages outside of the package manager because I'd be afraid of falling into dependency hell. So logically using the apt package manager would be the best option to fix these issues, particularly using Ubuntu's mirrors. The problem with this is the need to leave Solus for Pop!_OS or another Ubuntu-based distro (and since Solus and Bedrock Linux don't seem to play nicely together , I won't be able to simply have it running alongside Ubuntu strata). I've grown quite fond of how Solus and Budgie works -- and also how quickly it seems to boot and shut down (suspect it's some Celtic Magic at work here). It would really be a shame if I simply can't use it on my laptop due to these audio issues, especially when I tend to rely on audio quite a fair amount.
I'm aware this is more of a general Linux or Hardware question rather than Solus-related, but I'm pretty much at my wit's end here. With another semester just around the corner (which will be semi-online and semi-in-person for me), I'll be relying on audio to work for calls, meetings, and video as well as entertainment. I'm just wondering what the Solus community would advise in regards to this issue. Should I attempt to install the libraries offered by Ubuntu from the .deb packages? (Since installing Minecraft took a similar route to that.) Or just go with an Ubuntu-based distro and call it quits with Solus for this machine (which is pretty much a last resort for me)? Or something else?
Oh, and I almost forgot:
$ lsmod | grep snd_hda_intel
snd_hda_intel 49152 3
snd_intel_dspcfg 20480 4 snd_hda_intel,snd_sof_pci,snd_sof_intel_hda_common,snd_soc_skl
snd_hda_codec 163840 5 snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_soc_hdac_hda
snd_hda_core 106496 10 snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_ext_core,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_sof_intel_hda_common,snd_soc_hdac_hda,snd_soc_skl,snd_sof_intel_hda
snd_pcm 126976 9 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_sof,snd_sof_intel_hda_common,snd_soc_core,snd_soc_skl,snd_hda_core,snd_pcm_dmaengine
snd 98304 16 snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hwdep,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_timer,snd_compress,snd_soc_core,snd_pcm
$ lspci | grep Audio
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Device 02c8
$ eopkg list-installed | grep alsa
alsa-firmware - ALSA Firmware for certain sound cards
alsa-lib - The ALSA Sound Interface
alsa-plugins - Plugins for various sound servers
alsa-utils - Various utilities which are useful for controlling your sound card
$ eopkg list-installed | grep pulse
pulseaudio - Advanced sound system
Please let me know if I can provide any additional information. Thanks, and apologies for the long read there. Also, apologies if this kind of issue doesn't fit in these forums.