Toshiba Chromebook 2 & Kubuntu - some difficulties

[Ivochromebook]

Hey all,
I hope you can help me with this. I've spent 4 days trying all the solutions offered on the web.

I have a Toshiba Chromebook 2 (Swanky, C30). After trying Chrome OS for a while, I decided I'd prefer to go to Kubuntu, which I had used before on my Toshiba Satellite.
Installation (of Kubuntu 15.10) worked so far, except there was no sound. While trying to fix that, I let the system updates run. Once that was done, I rebooted and voila, now neither sound nor touchpad works.

In case that's useful information, I tried installing lubuntu as well, with the same result.

What can I do?

Would appreciate any help.

[Ivochromebook]

In the meantime, I'll try Kubuntu 14.04, let's see if that works better

[Ivochromebook]

same situation with Kubuntu 14.04. After installation everything works except sound, when I update, the touchpad stops working.

Is there any Ubuntu or Ubuntu flavour version which does not have this problem?

[claydoh]

Under the skin, all the Flavours and most if not all the variants (Mint, etc) are the same, so if one has a hardware issue, the others will have the same thing.

From a brief googling, it seems that the trackpad is broken with the latest kernel in 15.10 as well as 14.04 (they use the same one if installing Trusty from the latest iso download). One option is to select the previous kernel using the options in the bootup Grub screen. You might also try out 16.04 to see if that version's kernel works

However:
this how-to suggests installing an older kernel
https://github.com/brendenyule/Nativ...u-Installation
But since it is (was ) working before updates you already have a known good one installed


It also seems that sound support needs some manual configuration no matter which Linux distro one is using.
The same how-to has the fix:
https://github.com/brendenyule/Nativ...otkeys-Working

Not every how-to I saw mentions downloading the firmware and installing it, so it might be enough to edit the asound.state file as directed beginning where it says

Enter: sudo alsa force-unload

and going from there.

[Ivochromebook]

Thanks for that claydoh, I seem to have missed those how-to's. I tried them, but unfortunately they do not have any effect on sound or touchpad. Nice to have the hotkeys working though.
I went back to the basic, non-updated, installation of Kubuntu now, where at least I have a functioning touchpad, though no sound.
You're suggesting to select a previous kernel. How do I do that?

edit: figured it out. installed 3.16.0-70, no sound, and tried the same fix again, no sound.
Anything else I could do?

[claydoh]

I don't have any other suggestions, really. I don't have a chromebook myself.

One thing to check is to run alsamixer and see if the sound device is not muted for some reason., and also check System Settings and see if the default (highest priority) sound output is set to hdmi or other output

[oshunluvr]

It seems there may be a BIOS issue with many chromebooks, however a fix is available if you are brave enough to try it:

https://johnlewis.ie/custom-Chromebo.../rom-download/

Your laptop model is in the list near the middle. Here's the post that lead me to the above:

http://www.fascinatingcaptain.com/ho...-2-in-5-steps/