Sound

Getting the sound working was a little more foreign to me. With every previous disto I had installed on my laptop, sound had worked right out of the box. Luckily, I found a web site and a friend--both with some kernel-hackery tips. From Trae McCombs' web site:

"In order to get sound working on my Mom's Dell Inspiron 8200, using Ubuntu Linux, I had to do the following:

edit /etc/hotplug/blacklist
add snd_intel8x0m

edit /boot/grub/menu.lst add # kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro acpi_irq_isa=7

make SURE you leave in the #

run update-grub

That should do it!"

After following these steps, the gdm screen started making a drumbeat sound, but there were still no sounds after logging in. Byron Clark, our resident kernel genius, suggested that I check the permissions on /dev/dsp and /dev/snd. Doing so showed that they were owned by root and belonged to the audio group. I added myself to the audio group and Viola! I had sound.