Bit of a pain this one…
I’ve been absolutely delighted with Xubuntu 12.04 – fast, clean and nicely designed. However, suddenly I have sound issues – probably caused by an update.
It looks like Pulseaudio is not compatible with the standard sound setup in XFCE and needs to be removed. After various things I ended up completely reintstalling the sound system with
# apt-get purge linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils
# apt-get install linux-sound-base alsa-base alsa-utils
# apt-get install xubuntu-desktop
NB – It’s very important to re-install the xubuntu-desktop – you may need to install gdm as well if you set up XFCE from an initial Ubuntu install and not from Xubuntu.
Then rebooted.
So we’ve now got Xubuntu back to its default settings – but this has also re-installed pulseaudio (if you has removed it).
Then I removed pulaseaudio with
# apt-get –purge remove pulseaudio
Then rebooted, went into mixer settings and unmuted speakers and headphones. And sound is working fine – including my media buttons.
Use this procedure with caution – it’s been a bit tricky to get this far and there may be other steps which are needed.
One further point – watch out when installing a KDE app such as kgpg. This will pull in tons of KDE stuff including pulseaudio (again!). When I did that I had to go through this whole procedure again to get sound working again.
And a further point – until a recent Xubuntu update the laptop would start up with the sound muted – I had to go into the mixer app to unmute the speakers.