I’ve managed to get sound working totally correctly on my Asus m50v laptop under Ubuntu 8.10. The secret is to install ALSA v1.0.19.
How do you do this, I hear you ask. Aha, well. It’s relatively simple.
Step 1: Download an upgrade script
The simplest way to upgrade is to use the script available in the Ubuntu forums. You’ll need to log in to be able to download the script.
There’s a small problem with this script, in that the ALSA FTP site appears to be having issues today. I hacked the script slightly to use an alternate, mirror site for the packages you need. You can grab the script from here: alsaupgrade-10x-rev-116-jpwsh.gz
Step 2: Unzip/untar the script
If you use my version, unzip the script:
gunzip alsaupgrade-10x-rev-116-jpwsh
If you use the Ubuntu forums vesion, untar it:
tar xvf AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.16.tar
Step 3: Run the script
You need to run the script as root, so use sudo like this:
sudo ./alsaupgrade-10x-rev-116-jpwsh -id
or, forums version:
sudo ./AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.16.sh -id
This will download the required packages, compile and install them, all in one go.
Check the forums post for more information on how this script works.