DKMS

Revision 5 as of 2013-02-24 16:12:42

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Installation instructions

Following these instructions will give you the latest ALSA driver, but only for internal "HDA Intel" sound cards (if your computer is from 2005 or newer, you almost certainly have a "HDA Intel" sound card for handling internal speakers, headphone jacks and microphones). USB or Bluetooth sound will not be affected.

  • Go to this page

  • Under the "Source label", check which DKMS package that is corresponding to your current distribution series (Maverick, Natty, Oneiric etc) and click the leftmost arrow to expand that section.
    • - Note the difference between the quantal version of dkms-hda and the precise version of dkms-hda-lts-quantal: If you're running Ubuntu 12.10, you should use dkms-hda of quantal, whereas dkms-hda-lts-quantal of precise is for users of Ubuntu 12.04 that are running the backport kernel (the linux-image-generic-lts-quantal package).
  • Under the new section "Package files", click the file ending with ".deb", download and install it:
    • You can either do this by selecting "open with", which will take you to the Ubuntu Software Center, where you can click "Install", or

    • Save the file to disk, open a terminal window, change to the right directory and execute "sudo dpkg -i <file name>"

  • Reboot.

Uninstall instruction

Through Ubuntu Software Center

  • Search for "alsa-hda-dkms" in the search box
  • Click the search result
  • Click "Remove"
  • Reboot your computer to complete uninstallation.

Through command line

  • Execute the following command: "sudo apt-get remove alsa-hda-dkms"
  • Reboot your computer to complete uninstallation.

How it works

DKMS is a method to recompile kernel modules locally whenever the rest of the kernel changes. This means that you do not add a ppa: instead you download the package once and install it, confirm that it fixes your problem, and you're done. When you install a new kernel, as you regularly do if you have the updates repository enabled (this is recommended), DKMS will automatically recompile your existing DKMS package to fit the new kernel.

You can use this method if the latest ALSA snapshot works for you currently, and you just want the what's currently the latest (without having to stay updated with newer snapshots).