On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 08:43:10AM -0500, Curtis Maurand via Dng wrote:
>
> I have a fairly generic install of Excaliber with the mate desktop. I can't
> get sound to work at all. I'm working on AMD hardware. (AMD Ryzen 7 6800H).

I recently installed excaliber (and then upgraded to testing) on an AMD
Ryzen 9 laptop.

The problem that I had with sound was that it defaulted to HDMI instead
of the built in speakers and microphones: in other words it defaulted to
the wrong sound card.

I am on the wrong machine just now to compare with your lscpi.

But I would always suggest that you work at the alsa level first and get
that working: it underlies all the other stuff.

Start with trying aplay/arecord and use the -l and -L switches to see
what is happening.

It would be a good idea to download and run
https://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh
and examine the output. It includes all the /proc/asound/cards and much
more that I would otherwise be mentioning.

Oh yes, and run alsamixer to see what controls and cards you have. Don't
forget F5 and F6.

You may want to strip out any other sound software like pipewire and
pulseaudio (spit) that might be interfering with configuration in the
first instance. Once alsa is working, you can build other layers on top
if you need them.

ael