Guide: Ubuntu on Gateway T-6836

[Le Rob]

okay, just upgraded to 9.04.

headphone issue, as it has been stated above, just got worse. does not work if its plugged in to begin with.

lighting issue - nothing has changed.

okay, iono if its just my computer....but has your desktop effects just stopped working? like, i have no cube anymore, no minimizing effects, nothing. nada. i uninstalled the compizconfig manager i had that worked in the last version, tried using ubuntu's native setting choices. when i tried that, it just said something about it not being able to load. i reinstalled the compizconfig manager, but still same issue..
i'd like your inputs on this guys. thanks.

otherwise, it certainly runs faster. i can feel it. prettier too! =)

I can confirm that everything that was an issue is now an issue. In fact, it's worse, as pointed out: headphones don't even worked if plugged in on startup. Also, I can confirm nycazncarguy's issue--compiz no longer seems to work. I hadn't used it before, so I didn't notice until I tried to run it from terminal to get some basic debugging information. It crashed gdm, so I don't recommend it if you can avoid it, but I can tell you beyond all reasonable doubt it's because the graphics card in the T-68x8 series is now blacklisted for compiz (if I recall correctly, it's the Intel GM965 in the T-6828).

Also, I've tried to use OSS4.1 to resolve the sound issues. If you're desperate, it might work, but to be honest I found it presented far too many sound issues. For starters, there was no jack sense, so, while you'd get headphones, the front wouldn't automatically mute, and issues specifically with the 6828 meant that it was impossible to turn down the front without turning down the headphones. Secondly, apps using phonon (or anything using the HAL), such as Amarok, don't play--that is, HAL refuses to provide support for OSS until they support udev and sysfs. It should be noted that the sound quality on OSS was superior, at least to this audiophile's ears, but there was clearly issues with multiplexing (i.e. you couldn't listen to two different songs at one time and have them both play) that would make this only worth it if the headphones worked perfectly. My advice: stay clear for right now; it's not worth the effort to get it going.

Also tried: flashing the new BIOS (released August 2008). No such luck, though it's nice to have the latest version.

It should also be noted, for future workarounds, that Jaunty ships with ALSA 1.0.18.rc3. 1.0.19 is out, and I'll try that tonight yet.

On the upside: though the brightness buttons don't work, the screen looks fantastic. Crystal clear; looks nicer than Windows. My computer also loads faster (ext4 for the win--they said it was only going to speed things up 10-20%--well, I'm seeing at least a 50-75% boost...), and runs cooler.

Another thing noted: if you're doing the update and are installing Amarok, you will need libxine1-ffmpeg. Threw me for a loop at the start.

More coming soon.

[Le Rob]

Some progress: first and foremost, I managed to get the next version of ALSA installed with no problems (there's a handy script at this thread. I found no immediate solution to any of the problems.

However, I've managed to get my headphone jack working if nothing else. I don't know if the 6838 has as many confusing options as the 6828, but my laptop has 6 different sound devices, and the ones you can manipulate are, in no particular order:

HDA Intel (ALSA Mixer)
SigmaTel STAC9205 (OSS Mixer)
Playback: HDA Intel -- STAC92xx Analog (PulseAudio Mixebottr)
Capture: Monitor of HDA Intel -- STAC92xx Analog (PulseAudio Mixer)
Capture: HDA Intel -- STAC92xx Analog (PulseAudio Mixer)

The bottom three obviously deal with PulseAudio, which essentially works to patch sound from one source to another. I made sure the volumes were up to maximum on all of them (I'd rather deal with the primary sources, rather than secondary). You can mostly ignore the OSS Mixer. In the ALSA Mixer, make sure you've enabled the 'Capture', 'Digital', and 'Mux' sliders in preferences--ignore 'Capture 1' and 'Mux 1'; they're useless, as far as things go. Start with them on lowest volume, but make sure they're not muted. When 'Capture' and 'Mux' were at the highest, I was getting a piddly little sound until I unmuted 'Digital' and cranked it to its highest, but results may vary: I was using the awful little speakers on the laptop's front.

Also, you need to make sure that you've enabled 'Digital Input Source' in preferences, and set it to 'Digital Mic 1', not 'Analog'.

The recording was still pretty quiet, but I chalk that up to the actual microphone itself. This is good news, though--the microphone didn't work in Windows in the first place.

More to come in regards to making ALSA 1.0.19 work.

EDIT: Addendum--make sure you have 'Analog Loopback' disabled, or you'll suffer some terrible feedback.

[nycazncarguy]

Some progress: first and foremost, I managed to get the next version of ALSA installed with no problems (there's a handy script at this thread. I found no immediate solution to any of the problems.

However, I've managed to get my headphone jack working if nothing else. I don't know if the 6838 has as many confusing options as the 6828, but my laptop has 6 different sound devices, and the ones you can manipulate are, in no particular order:

HDA Intel (ALSA Mixer)
SigmaTel STAC9205 (OSS Mixer)
Playback: HDA Intel -- STAC92xx Analog (PulseAudio Mixebottr)
Capture: Monitor of HDA Intel -- STAC92xx Analog (PulseAudio Mixer)
Capture: HDA Intel -- STAC92xx Analog (PulseAudio Mixer)

The bottom three obviously deal with PulseAudio, which essentially works to patch sound from one source to another. I made sure the volumes were up to maximum on all of them (I'd rather deal with the primary sources, rather than secondary). You can mostly ignore the OSS Mixer. In the ALSA Mixer, make sure you've enabled the 'Capture', 'Digital', and 'Mux' sliders in preferences--ignore 'Capture 1' and 'Mux 1'; they're useless, as far as things go. Start with them on lowest volume, but make sure they're not muted. When 'Capture' and 'Mux' were at the highest, I was getting a piddly little sound until I unmuted 'Digital' and cranked it to its highest, but results may vary: I was using the awful little speakers on the laptop's front.

Also, you need to make sure that you've enabled 'Digital Input Source' in preferences, and set it to 'Digital Mic 1', not 'Analog'.

The recording was still pretty quiet, but I chalk that up to the actual microphone itself. This is good news, though--the microphone didn't work in Windows in the first place.

More to come in regards to making ALSA 1.0.19 work.

EDIT: Addendum--make sure you have 'Analog Loopback' disabled, or you'll suffer some terrible feedback.

Sounds interesting. I'll give that a try tonight after I nap (yes, at night). Running one 1hr of sleep from 18 hrs ago...stupid class registration..What kind of college sets class registration at 6am?? and has a teacher who gives a hard test the same day 3 hrs later? ANYWAY

Sorry for getting off-topic. And yeah, those are the same FIVE, not six, (its okay, minor thing) that I have. Or something like that. In windows right now, so cant check at the moment. I only use headphone jack anyway. I have them hooked up to the external speakers. I'm pretty sure I speak for all of us when I say this: the built-in speakers on this thing sucks.

I havent tried this with the new alsa, obviously, as I'm still in windows, but I remember trying skype a couple days back. webcam works, but i got some audio problems? I couldnt do a test call. I heard music from amarok from built-in speakers fine tho, so I dunno what that was about. Any clue?

No compiz working is a huge bummer for me. I use expo alot..sigh.

[Le Rob]

I meant what I said, actually, though I can see why it might have confused you. There are actually six different devices that show up when running diagnostics; the five that I listed are just the entries on the volume control, and correspond to the actual soundcard, a STAC9205. Sorry for being unclear, but if we have the same devices across the 6828 and the 6838, this is good news(ish)--it means that the bug affects a broader range of users, and we can correspondingly demand a bit more attention from the devs.

At this point, I don't see any point in upgrading ALSA to 1.0.19. It'll hit the repositories soon enough, I suppose, and if the only fix is downgrading to 1.0.16 vis-a-vis a custom-rolled kernel, then why trouble yourself?

The webcam does work, and I believe that the earlier recommendation of the program 'Cheese' is one to reiterate.

You say that it works with external speakers? Can you confirm that it doesn't work with headphones? Also, are your external speakers powered by an AC adaptor/batteries (as opposed to drawing power from the computer)? If you confirm both, it would seem that the issue is related to powering the jacks, and that's an important distinction to make for the devs.

As to Compiz, a simple search vindicated me: you can see that the Intel 965 is on the blacklist. You can force-enable it by following the instructions listed here, but with the caveat that if you hose your system, it's your own fault. I doubt it will come to that, though, and if you have your desktop (GDM) crash on you, you can press CTRL+ALT+F1, log in, and type

sudo killall gdm && sudo gdm

. Also, if you chose to store the value in ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager, you can run

nano -w ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager

to remove the line, and then save/exit with Ctrl+O Ctrl+X.

[nycazncarguy]

I meant what I said, actually, though I can see why it might have confused you. There are actually six different devices that show up when running diagnostics; the five that I listed are just the entries on the volume control, and correspond to the actual soundcard, a STAC9205. Sorry for being unclear, but if we have the same devices across the 6828 and the 6838, this is good news(ish)--it means that the bug affects a broader range of users, and we can correspondingly demand a bit more attention from the devs.

At this point, I don't see any point in upgrading ALSA to 1.0.19. It'll hit the repositories soon enough, I suppose, and if the only fix is downgrading to 1.0.16 vis-a-vis a custom-rolled kernel, then why trouble yourself?

The webcam does work, and I believe that the earlier recommendation of the program 'Cheese' is one to reiterate.

You say that it works with external speakers? Can you confirm that it doesn't work with headphones? Also, are your external speakers powered by an AC adaptor/batteries (as opposed to drawing power from the computer)? If you confirm both, it would seem that the issue is related to powering the jacks, and that's an important distinction to make for the devs.

As to Compiz, a simple search vindicated me: you can see that the Intel 965 is on the blacklist. You can force-enable it by following the instructions listed here, but with the caveat that if you hose your system, it's your own fault. I doubt it will come to that, though, and if you have your desktop (GDM) crash on you, you can press CTRL+ALT+F1, log in, and type

sudo killall gdm && sudo gdm

. Also, if you chose to store the value in ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager, you can run

nano -w ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager

to remove the line, and then save/exit with Ctrl+O Ctrl+X.

Haha, okay, my bad.

And no, the webcam works without cheese. it worked in skype! I didnt even open up cheese. I saw myself in the skype preferences video setup.

And no, I didnt say i heard sound through my externals...lol. I heard sound from my built-in speakers. I was just saying that I generally use my external speakers for this laptop, regardless of the OS. Sorry for not clarifying that. And if it still matters, my speakers run off an external power supply.

I'm definitely trying out that compiz override. I use it too much..lol. Thanks for that. I'll be trying it out later tonight.

[c_wilson]

First, thanks to everyone in the thread - helped me get my t-6836 up and running with 8.04, very helpful.

Now i'm on a fresh install of 9.04 x64 and having pretty much the same trouble as everyone else.

I successfully upgraded to the latest alsa, 1.0.19, and the headphone jack still does not work. PC speakers still work.

Compiz has also stopped working though it was working with the RC.

I also wanted to note, in case it saves someone some time, that the headphone issue is present in a bunch of other distros. I've installed fedora 10, then upgraded to 11, no luck. Also tried sidux 2009-01, openSUSE 11.1, Mandriva 2009 spring off of live media, same story.

Sounds like downgrading the kernel was working OK in 8.10, anyone try it on jaunty? I'm going to give that a shot or maybe just reinstall 8.04.

Normally don't mind a few hardware snafus, but the headphones not working is a real show stopper for me. bummer.

[Xombie207]

I tried to install kubuntu with two different discs and they wouldn't work on my t6836...they both froze at the boot menu after u choose what language u want...i just reinstalled intrepid 64 bit and upgraded to jaunty and then installed the kubuntu-desktop package...i was using gnome, but im going back to kde...

[Salvar Fawkes]

I upgraded to Jaunty because everyone was raving about it, but now I find out that it breaks existing functionality. This is just ridiculous. Does there exist an easy "downgrade" function, or am I looking at a complete reinstall?

[kaoskorruption]

This is the second update where functionality decreased. The last one created major sound issues as well, but we were able to fix them. Hopefully we can do it again, but who knows.

[Le Rob]

UPDATE ON HEADPHONES IN JAUNTY: There was a message on Bugzilla today by a person who has managed to get their headphones working. It has been confirmed to work by a few people, and I'm doing it myself right now. I'll let you know if it works.

The solution can be found here.

EDIT: Sadly, this does not work on the T-6828. However, I urge others to try it with their laptops.

EDIT EDIT: With the addition of a line to my /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf file, I can confirm that this headphone fix works for the T-6828. Make sure you append:

options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=0 model=eapd

... to the end of that file, and reboot. (Theoretically, I think the enable_msi=0 line could be removed, but I'm not about to play with something when it works...)