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After installing Ubuntu 20.04 alongside Windows on my brand new Acer Aspire 5 laptop, many things are not working. During the installation I checked the box to install third party drivers so I'm hoping this didn't cause this to happen. But basically:

  • External monitor is not recognized at all after plugging it in through HDMI. It is a ViewSonic monitor.
  • Sound system is not recognized by Ubuntu, it comes up as "Dummy Output". Bluetooth does work through my headphones however
  • Touchpad is not recognized (which has a fingerprint scanner)
  • Built in microphone is not recognized either, but the webcam works fine

Output from lspci:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9a14 (rev 01)

0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 9a49 (rev 01)

0000:00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Device 9a11 (rev 01)

0000:00:0e.0 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation Volume Management Device NVMe RAID Controller

0000:00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Device a0ed (rev 20)

0000:00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Device a0ef (rev 20)

0000:00:14.3 Network controller: Intel Corporation Device a0f0 (rev 20)

0000:00:15.0 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device a0e8 (rev 20)

0000:00:15.3 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device a0eb (rev 20)

0000:00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Device a0e0 (rev 20)

0000:00:17.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Device 09ab

0000:00:19.0 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device a0c5 (rev 20)

0000:00:19.1 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device a0c6 (rev 20)

0000:00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device a0b0 (rev 20)

0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device a082 (rev 20)

0000:00:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation Device a0c8 (rev 20)

0000:00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Device a0a3 (rev 20)

0000:00:1f.5 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Device a0a4 (rev 20)

0000:01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)

10000:e0:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Device a0d3 (rev 20)

10000:e0:1c.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Device 09ab

10000:e0:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device a0bc (rev 20)

10000:e1:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Sandisk Corp Device 5009 (rev 01)
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  • Thanks for sharing your grief. But if you expect us to help, we would need more infos. Such as what hardware you have. Could you put the output of lspci to your question? With the current information no one will be able to make a qualified answer.
    – kanehekili
    Dec 5, 2020 at 21:55
  • @kanehekili Thanks for the response, I'm just frustrated because I depend on this OS heavily for my development and spent hours searching for support on this topic. I've updated the post with the output of that command.
    – ekiefer
    Dec 5, 2020 at 22:05
  • @kanehekili The laptop also has a Intel iRIS XE graphics card. And additionally I just rebooted the system with my laptop lid closed and the external monitor works. However, when I open the lid the screen on the laptop is inactive. So somehow it is able to communicate with monitor, just not when I boot with the lid open. Currently it is listed as "Unknown Display" in my settings.
    – ekiefer
    Dec 5, 2020 at 22:11
  • You may need a newer version. Normally we recommend the current LTS version, but very new hardware often needs newest version of Ubuntu and even then perhaps newer kernel or suport software. Acer Aspire 5 Model A515-54-5649 Intel Core i5-10210U Install Tutorial ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2437702 Note newer kernel & support software used to make it work. phoronix.com/…
    – oldfred
    Dec 5, 2020 at 22:30
  • 1
    I'd concur with oldfred. Since I'm always using old hardware to get a blazing fast (linux) experience it might be a good idea to install Ubuntu 20.10. You might check here for someone that had problems with graphics card.
    – kanehekili
    Dec 5, 2020 at 22:34

2 Answers 2

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I recently got Acer Aspire 5 (515-56) and upon installation of the Ubuntu 20.04 ended up with exact same problems!

I manage to solve them by doing following:

  • setting up secure boot password in BIOS, which enabled me to turn off Secure boot afterwards (all in BIOS)
  • in "Main" tab of BIOS, press Ctrl+S and option for touchpad appears (in my case it was not there prior to this). Choose PS2 instead of I2C. Or in some versions Basic vs Advance in Touchpad options. Linux has issues with new I2C drivers which affects touchpad, this solves it (simply by avoiding I2C).
  • install latest kernel. No need to install 20.10, kernel upgrade is sufficient. Fresh install of Ubuntu got me 5.4.0 kernel. After upgrade to 5.10.4 my display was recognized, my sound settings appeared (was Dummy Output prior to this), my HDMI connected external monitor started working, function keys started working, etc. etc. Simplest way to do it is to use GUI - Ubuntu Mainline kernel installer (for example - Method 3 in these instructions).

All in all, after these steps I got my new laptop fully operational. Hoping it will help some more people having similar issues.

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I had the same problem. My touchpad didn't work at all. My notebook is an ACER NITRO 5 AN515-56, which I installed Ubuntu 21.10 on. I on the contrary turned I2C on in BIOS. After this, the touchpad began working completely, even with scrolling.

However, before turning I2C on in BIOS I did the following which may affect:

  1. Everything that Nemanja Martinovic did, but I turned I2C on.

  2. Following the instructions in Ubuntu 20.04 Elantech touchpad not working, I edited the /etc/default/grub file as below:

    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash psmouse.proto=bare" 
    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i8042.reset i8042.nomux i8042.nopnp i8042.noloop"
    

    Then saved the altered file and updated GRUB:

    sudo update-grub
    
  3. I also ran these commands:

    cd /etc/modprobe.d/
    sudo touch ./elantech-touchpad.conf
    sudo echo "options psmouse proto=imps" > ./options.conf
    sudo modprobe -r psmoouse
    sudo modprobe psmouse
    
  4. And, maybe something from this topic: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=275517

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