Help with driver installation

Support
1

Hello,

Requirements:

I have Searched the forum for my issue and found nothing related or helpful
I have checked the [Resources category ]
I have reviewed the Wiki for relevant information
I have read the the Release Notes

OpenMandriva Lx version:

Desktop environment (KDE, LXQT…):

Description of the issue (screenshots if relevant):

Relevant informations (hardware involved, software version, logs or output…):

This is my first time posting here as a new OpenMandriva user. I apologize in advance if I ended up misreading one of the rules.

My question is about downloading/updating drivers. Specifically, those for sound. Here and there, when playing a visual novel on Steam, I will hear a crackling noise not native to the game. I even tried using headphones and the crackling came up once. Its rather infrequent, but still worries me about it developing further.

As such, I’d like help downloading and updating the driver for my Acer laptop, specs listed at the bottom of this message. The Acer website only provides drivers for windows, and I’m unsure about how to properly use Wine.

I’m a Linux novice. Any and all help would be appreciated.

Model Number: AG15-42P
Part Number: NX.JJHAA.001

2

Dealing with sound drivers is a ROYAL PAIN IN THE %#$#

Makes Nvidia look like a linux saint. Most manufacturers can’t be bothered to develop drivers at all, and there is so much turnover in the chip inventory that 2 versions of the same motherboard can have 2 different chips.

What that means is you need the info on the specific sound chip on your system

So your best bet on this is to go here: OpenMandriva Hardware Database

and test your system. That will also show you how well those drivers are packed into the kernel (to the extent they are…)

If I remember correctly the hw-probe software is pre-installed:

sudo -E hw-probe -all -upload

The information there will tell you where to start with all hardware issues.

Also, be sure to include the results of “inxi -F” for your system

for example (here’s mine):

Audio:
  Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Navi 31 HDMI/DP Audio
    driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Starship/Matisse HD Audio
    driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-3: ASUSTek USB Audio driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid
    type: USB
  API: ALSA v: k6.14.2-desktop-3omv2590 status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.4.4 status: active

Finally lets do the obvious…did you check your manual for what your sound card is? And then search around the web based on that?

For example:

google ALC4082 linux
2 Likes
3

I tried using the Hardware Database link. My end result is at this link, but I don’t know how to make heads or tails of it. Because I’m rather new to Linux and just want to operate free of Windows, whether something is “detected” or "works, or what I’m supposed to interpret from the terminal-style representation of each log, I’m not sure where to go. Your help is appreciated.

(Add “?probe=e9b2216155” to a linux-hardware dot org link to see in further detail.)

Here is the inxi log results:

Audio:
Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Renoir/Cezanne HDMI/DP Audio
vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie:
speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 04:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:1637 class-ID: 0403
Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Audio Coprocessor
vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: snd_rn_pci_acp3x v: kernel pcie:
speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 04:00.5 chip-ID: 1022:15e2 class-ID: 0480
Device-3: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 17h/19h/1ah HD Audio
vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie:
speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 04:00.6 chip-ID: 1022:15e3 class-ID: 0403
Device-4: Lenovo ThinkPad USB-C Dock Gen2 USB Audio
driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid type: USB rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s
lanes: 1 bus-ID: 1-1.3.3.2:11 chip-ID: 17ef:30d1 class-ID: 0300
API: ALSA v: k6.19.0-desktop-1omv2690 status: kernel-api
Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.4.10 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse
status: active 2: pipewire-media-session status: off 3: wireplumber
status: active

This is my sound card:
Codec: ATI R6xx HDMI
Codec: Realtek ALC256

According to AI-generated search, the driver responsible is " sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c". Regular results appear to be general definitions from 2019.

If any of this can help you guide me even further, I’d appreciate that.

4

Thanks for posting that. I’ll do some digging.

In the meantime, you can use the sound panel in system settings to swap sound cards from the realtec to the amd (assuming your monitor has a headphone or other audio jack)

If you can swap them, make the hdmi the default and see if the problem is still there

Also, does that noise happen with music and video? Or only in games? Or only in Steam games (vs GOG vs other games installed from the repo)?

Finally, what version of OpenMandriva are you on? and what Desktop Environment?

5

I’m using Rome Openmandriva, version 26.02.

In my experience, it has only happened with two Steam games, and they were pretty low maintenance games (Think like a visual novel or Fire Emblem game for the GBA). I seemed to get a similar result when I tried plugging in headphones, though once again, this is an occasional pop-up sound, not a consistent problem.

I haven’t heard it happen yet with my laptop plugged into my hdmi tv monitor, but short of having sound play a lot, it would be hard to recreate this situation.

Once again, thank you for all your help.

6

If it has only been happening with those 2 games (and not others), sounds to me like whatever libraries they are using are at issue, not the drivers

From the driver standpoint:

  1. Make sure your bios is up to date
  2. Since you’re on Rome you have a more current kernel than most distros (the kernel is where the driver is). Cooker might have an even newer one I don’t remember. It will eventually…

I would also mention the sound issue on Steam for those games and see what comes up.

If there’s a support forum for the Motherboard mfg. I would check/post there too.

Finally I might try a different distro like bazzite. They play around with some strange audio driver blobs in their kernel.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find anything around the web to narrow this down

Beyond that I’m out of tricks at the moment

7

Once again, thank you. I’ll keep experimenting, and whatever happens happens. Maybe I’ll take it as a sign to just learn more about system management so I can investigate future problems myself. Far future though.