Fix No System Sound and Audio Problem On A Computer/Laptop Running Ubuntu 12.10/12.04/Linux Mint 13/12

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Does your system sound and audio stop working unexpectedly, despite it was working fine previously? Sound problems seem to affect mainly users of laptops and are also present with users of computers.

In this tutorial we will try to see a solution that will help us fix sound problems in the following Linux distributions:

• Ubuntu 12.10/12.04/11.10
• Linux Mint 13/12

But keep in mind that this solution may not work for all users because it depends on the audio hardware and software you have. In this solution, we will try to install some missing audio packages on your system as well as reinstalling some other available packages that might be corrupted.

Getting Started

Open the terminal and issue these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ubuntu-audio-dev/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo apt-get -y install linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils libasound2

sudo apt-get -y install gdm ubuntu-desktop linux-image-`uname -r`

sudo apt-get -y --reinstall install libasound2 linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils

sudo apt-get -y --reinstall lightdm ubuntu-desktop linux-image-`uname -r`

killall pulseaudio

rm -r ~/.pulse*

sudo usermod -aG `cat /etc/group | grep -e '^pulse:' -e '^audio:' -e '^pulse-access:' -e '^pulse-rt:' -e '^video:' | awk -F: '{print $1}' | tr '\n' ',' | sed 's:,$::g'` `whoami`

When you finish, restart your system. If sound still missing from your system, you can check this article we published some months ago. If you have something to add, please do by commenting below.