No more problems with the microphone on Laptops with Intel’s 82801I

After a looooong time using Ubuntu/Linux Mint I decided that it was time to go back where everything begun: Debian. So i decided to install Debian Testing (which will be soon Stable) and see for myself how everything changed since the last time I used a few years ago.

Everything started when I read about Linux Mint Debian Edition. I downloaded it and saw that the wireless card was recognized!! and as LMDE is based in Debian (duh!) I relized that it might be possible that Debian could see my wireless! Downloaded, installed, enjoyed

Until I realized my internal microphone wasn’t working at all, although I was able to use an external microphone conected to the mic jack, but that would be stupid as I already have one that already works…

Anyways, I decided that I wasn’t going to give up only for a microphone, so I searched…I search like a motherfucker until, after trying and trying (and eventually reinstalling, don’t ask me why) I found the correct way to enable the microphone

alejandro@matos:~$ lspci | grep Audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)

There it is, but alsamixer doesn’t give a fuck if your sound card has been recognized or if everything works but the mic, because it’s not alsa’s fault it the module! snd_hda_intel

The only thing you need to do, is this (as root):

echo "options snd_hda_intel model=auto" >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

And there you go! your mic should be working

PS: please, restart before trying!