Jun182012

Why don’t I have sound when I boot Linux on my iMac?

aram nathan asks:

I am dual-booting Mac OS X and Linux on my iMac. For some strange reason, I am not getting sound from my system in Linux, although it is common Intel audio and I have installed the popular Mint distro. What could be the reason ?

I am running an unmodified, out of the box install on my iMac 2.66Ghz. I am puzzled that Mint is not able to configure what is commonly Intel Audio. In fact my laptop (which also has Intel audio) is dual-booting Windows and Slackware, and sound works out of the box under Slackware!

Can we say Slackware is more friendlier than Mint or that Apple are making it harder for other operating systems to play nice? This is not the first time, I have tried with two or three Linux distros and the results have been negative as far as sound is concerned.


Browser: Firefox 13
System: Linux Mint-13
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8 Answers -

0 votes

Susendeep Dutta

June 18, 2012

Mint is a good OS which has very wide support.I think that Apple is making hardest possible way to not to allow any Linux distro to function properly as you have mentioned that none other Linux distro gave you sound.Moreover,Apple locks down hardware,so this proves it.

0 votes

ryandigweed0

June 18, 2012

I guess linux can’t install the sound driver for the Mac Hardware. Try updating the drivers for the kernel you got insstalled. With this:

sudo urpmi kernel-tmb-desktop-latest

, then once you boot into with GRUB there will be a new Kernel Entry,

gksu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

Then put this in the text editor:

options snd-hda-intel model=auto

Or

options snd-hda-intel model=mbp5

Or

options snd-hda-intel model=mbp55

or

options snd-hda-intel model=imac27

Try that and see? Try one at a time, and see if you can get it running :)

aram nathan

Thanks for the advice. Of late I have observed that distros based on gentoo like Sabayon and Calculate are successful in getting sound out-of-the-box in iMac. I will investigate further. Thanks to all.

August 24, 2012
0 votes

James West

June 19, 2012

In my experience, Apple never plays nice with other OS.

0 votes

Noah Watson

July 19, 2012

Apple has had issues integrating with other OS’s. For example, when installing bootcamp- some drivers may not install correctly. Did you install any drivers when installing Linux? If so consider reinstalling these and see it it works.

0 votes

Timothy Liem

August 13, 2012

I think it’s Apple play to prevent the dual-boot option like Microsoft wants to do with UEFI on oncoming Windows 8.

0 votes

Efi Dreyshner

August 17, 2012

What is your sound card?
You need to instal a driver (:

0 votes

VictorGeis

August 26, 2012

I’ve had similar issues when I’ve dual-booted ubuntu. There is some command line tool I remember using to adjust the audio. Once I played with that, the sound worked perfectly!

0 votes

Theo Reisinger

October 8, 2012

Be sure you have the right soundcard driver installed/updated