Manjaro ORP5 Audio

Audio on an ORP5 is fine in Manjaro, however, the internal microphone switch doesn’t seem to work using stock kernels. Some digging into PopOS by System76 yielded a kernel patch that is required to fix the realtek driver so it will properly identify the hardware and enable the 3pin mic connection. Building a new kernel can be daunting for many newer Linux users and the tendency, I think, is to try and built it entirely on your own. You can build tighter, smaller, and more tailored kernels this way, it’s true, but you can also miss drivers or kernel features your desktop expects you to have which will in general make life harder on yourself. Here I’ll take you through patching the official Manjaro kernel with the ORP5 (Clevo P960) mic switch patch to enable the switch. With these steps you’ll build the kernel your desktop wants, with the feature you want. There are many guides on building your own kernel under Manjaro. These steps are building a kernel that is very very close to the default Manjaro kernel, but adding a custom patch to fix the mic switch.

You can download the 1000-orp5.patch patch file here. Save the file locally as you will need it in a moment.

Next we have to clone the git repository. I’m currently working off the linux6.1 branch. It can be cloned from https://gitlab.manjaro.org/packages/core/linux61

Once the repo is cloned you need to cpy the 1000-orp5.patch file into the linux61 directory.

Next, edit the PKGBUILD file, adding the 1000-orp5.patch to the end fo the patches list and adding the coresponding sha256sum to the sha256sums array. These are prepositionally indexed arrays so if you add the orp patch to end, you have to add the sha sum to the end as well.

Once the patch is added you can execute:

updpkgsums && makepkg -f -s MAKEFLAGS=-j[PROCCOUNT]

Replace [PROCCOUNT] with the number of processors you have and want to dedicated to the kernel build process. Building a kernel can take quite a while, on my orp5 it takes approximately 20m to build the kernel, maybe more with proccount set to 11.

Once the kernel is built you can install it with:

makepkg -i

Then simply reboot and you should now have 3pin mic switch support on your orp5 running Manjaro.

About

Agathezol is a gamer, programmer, father, husband, and musician. When he's not writing blog posts nobody reads he generally writes protocol stacks, network code, and core telecommunications software but has dabbled in game design, web programming, mobile device software, and desktop software.

Categories: General, Linux