Does Linux not support on-board audio?

The problem is not AMD, Linux doesn't discriminate when it comes to branding. Linux has, at least for me, been phenomenal at supporting on board audio from multiple chipsets, even supporting some very distinctive dedicated sound cards from Asus Sonar's to Creative X-fi's.

The first thing you want to do is find out the brand of your motherboard's on-board audio chipset. The most common brand in the computer industry for on-board audio is Realtek, which is commonly supported on linux. Since this is a custom machine, you'll want to first find out the make/model of motherboard you have. You may be able to find this out by simply calling the store you bought it from, or you could easily do it yourself via software. Cpu-Z or Speccy are great Windows programs for this(among other things). Once you find out which motherboard you have; Get to Googling.

When diagnosing linux problems, the biggest key is to remember that Google is your friend. You could probably type in a search string such as "motherboard xxx.xxxxx audio linux" and find your solution right away with a small workaround. Or, you could look up the motherboard directly and find out about the vendor of the onboard audio, and use the name of the onboard audio's chipset in a google string, such as "VIA 865TA ubuntu audio".

Hope that helps.

CPU-Z Speccy

P.S. I just thought of one more possible solution. Under the Ubuntu control panel, try checking the Restricted Hardware drivers, there's always a chance Ubuntu doesn't ship with the driver or has an open-source version of the driver you need, so it has to get a custom closed-source one from the vendor. This is a lot more common with graphics cards and wifi adapters, but there's always a change it could be doing this for your sound as well.

P.P.S. If none of this helps, you may have to consider the possibility that it's the motherboard at fault. I would check the bios settings to make sure onboard audio is on. And after that, doing a BIOS update, these tend to fix a lot of little problems and quirks hardware related to your motherboard

I've also had some problems with certain audio chips (like the one in my iMac) working with Linux (Ubuntu in particular). I would recommend picking up one of the cheapest USB sound cards (You can pick one up for like $2 bucks); so if it doesn't work with your distribution of Linux (which it most likely will), you haven't wasted a lot of money.

Are you sure the audio isn't just muted on default from the installation? Try a terminal window and running alsamixer to check levels and mute status on the various sound card outputs.

Had both AMD and ATI cards working fine in Linux. Sound issues are often due to missing drivers as 'non-free' drivers are sometimes required. I used to have this problem with audio from last fm plugin in google chrome, but have found audio always seems to work from my laptop, to an old spare laptop, to an old PC tower to my own machine.

You may need to install the extra drivers to get the GPU to work properly if it's no onboard.

I've also found compatibility to be fine between single and quad core intel and AMD CPUs. Just because it's 'designed for windows' does not mean that it will only work for windows.

My monitor has a ridiculous sticker that says "compatible with windows 7" - Well, it's a frigging LED monitor so it had better be!! Not a surprise to find that the same monitor works with Linux.

I've also been able to fix all of my Linux problems by using google because most problems people have had before and if they have not then it's always worth posting at your favourite distro forum page. Just be prepared to type a bunch of terminal commands to fix it though.

I think if you do a web search then I think there is a list of supported audio chipsets out. There is also a list of all compatible wireless controllers. If you know your motherboard model or computer model then you can normally search this to find the solution.

FYI - Was running Linux fine on AMD phenom 2 quad core with HD5450 - so that's AMD. ati and onboard sound covered. Same setup ran fine with nvidia card too. Both tested duel monitors.

Dropped Linux due to Web cam compatibility.