No sound on Chromebook 433T Ubuntu 22.04

Question

I have a Chromebook Asus 433T. My goal was to completely remove ChromeOS and replace it with Linux. Using the instructions on https://MrChromebox.tech/#alt_os, I completely overwrote the BIOS, and installed Ubuntu 22.04 fresh. Most features work fine, but I cannot get any sound output from the built-in speakers or headphone jack.

The Audio chip is a PCI device.

Output of lspci:

$ lspci -v | grep -A7 -i audio
00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio (rev 21)
    DeviceName: Multimedia audio controller
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 16
    Memory at 9112c000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Memory at 91110000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: snd_soc_skl
    Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel, snd_soc_skl, snd_soc_avs, snd_sof_pci_intel_skl
$ lspci -nn | grep -i audio
00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio [8086:9d71] (rev 21)

Output of aplay -l:

$ aplay -l
aplay: device_list:274: no soundcards found...

alsamixer also showed no sound cards at this point.

Using a how-to I found somewhere I ran the commands just to get alsamixer to show something:

$ sudo apt install linux-modules-extra-`uname -r`

and

$ sudo modprobe snd-dummy

New output of aplay:

$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Dummy [Dummy], device 0: Dummy PCM [Dummy PCM]
  Subdevices: 7/8
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
  Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
  Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
  Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
  Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
  Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
  Subdevice #7: subdevice #7

alsamixer showed dummy after these two, but of course no sound from dummy.

I have of course already set Settings->Sound to set volume of sound to maximum.

I'm not sure how I need to proceed from here, but I'm thinking that somehow I need to either add Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio to the sound cards list, or replace dummy with this value. Can anyone please advise me?

Archisman Panigrahi · Accepted Answer · 2024-05-16T00:27:38.273

Summary: Sound will work, but not in Ubuntu 22.04. Either use 24.04, or switch to a different OS. Here is how to set up sound.

There is an audio script repository for Chromebooks, but it does not support Ubuntu anymore. Previously it used to support Ubuntu, but 22.04 still didn't work because certain packages had too old versions.

While the script does not support Ubuntu, and shows error message in Ubuntu 24.04, that can be bypassed, and I have verified that it works in 24.04.

You have several options.

Fresh install Ubuntu 24.04 (don't upgrade - the upgrade path may have serious bugs).

Download the script with git, and open the repository in terminal.

sudo apt install git
git clone https://github.com/WeirdTreeThing/chromebook-linux-audio
cd chromebook-linux-audio

Now, open the setup-audio script in a text editor and comment out line 54. Under the function def ubuntu(), change the line exit() to #exit().

Afterward, run the script with ./setup-audio.

Speakers and mic should work after a reboot.

The other option is to switch to a different distro.

Pop OS, LMDE 6 and Debian 12 are similar to Ubuntu, and are supported by the audio script. Touch should work out of the box in Pop OS, and the audio script supports it. The touch screen may not work out of the box in LMDE and Debian, but it should work after installing the audio-script, which will automatically install a custom kernel that supports touch.

sudo apt install git
git clone https://github.com/WeirdTreeThing/chromebook-linux-audio
cd chromebook-linux-audio
./setup-audio

Then reboot.

Fedora 40 should work (with touch working out of the box), and the audio script supports it too. However, the package management system in Fedora is different from Ubuntu.
Arch works (BTW), and so does Endeavour OS. In the latter, touch should work out of the box (in the former you have to set everything up), and the audio script supports both of them. However, if you are not comfortable using a rolling release, use the distros mentioned above.

For automatic screen rotation (in both XOrg and Wayland), see this answer.

No sound on Chromebook 433T Ubuntu 22.04

1 Answers1