I have an older Dell Inspiron 3537 that I recently tried to install Linux Mint on, but I'm running into major audio problems. It seems that the system can't detect the audio codec, which results in the error message: [ 3.511915] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: no codecs found. I've already run diagnostics and heard some beeps, indicating that the audio hardware could still be functional. My laptop features an Intel-Haswell-ULT HD Audio device with the snd_hda_intel driver. I've spent several hours trying to fix this audio issue without success, and because of that, I'm starting to look for another distro that might work better. Everything else works smoothly, but without audio, it's not really usable for tasks like browsing YouTube. I'd appreciate any suggestions!
3 Answers
You might want to check if you selected the 'install third-party software' option during the installation. Sometimes, it can help with codec issues since your Intel chipset is usually compatible with Linux. If you did check that box, it might be something else causing the problem.
Have you considered trying out Pop!_OS? I've had some luck with it on various hardware. Just a heads-up, though—some users have reported the same audio issue with Pop!_OS too, so keep that in mind!
I just installed Pop!_OS and ran into that exact problem—got stuck with a dummy audio output. Really makes me wonder if there's a deeper issue with these older laptops.
This might be a known bug in the ALSA audio driver for Ubuntu. Here's a link to the bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/2101024. You might want to check it out or see if there are any workarounds mentioned in there!
I did click on that option, and honestly, I'm out of ideas after searching for over three hours for a solution.