I decided to install Skype on my Dell 1521 laptop running Xubuntu Hardy. Installation of Skype went fine, and Skype’s audio playback worked fine. Skype was also able to use the laptop’s built-in webcam, which was pretty cool, too. However, it appeared that the laptop’s built-in microphone was not working. After some testing, though, I found that the mic was working, the volume was just amazingly low. Like ghostly whisper quiet. It took me a while to figure out how to fix this, but in the end, the following worked:

1. Set the input to Digital Mic
2. Go into alsamixer and <tab> to change to Capture mode
3. Set the slider for Capture and MUX up to the highest possible
4. Exit out of alsamixer
5. Go into Skype, and change the audio devices to one of the HW0 options
6. Save, then exit out of Skype
7. Go back into Skype, change the audio devices to Default Device
8. Save your config changes

Once I did the above, volume was at a very audible level for both input and output were perfect in Skype. And I can cross one more thing off my to-do list.

I found an ultra-handy guide to displaying/setting the system clock in Linux (and, theoretically, most other UNIX-like operating systems. I always lose track somewhere when I am working with the system clock. Not via the Set Time/Date bit on the Gnome or KDE clocks, mind you, but from the CLI. So a guide like this is invaluable in helping me remember how to adjust the date and time, and then to save that as UTC time in the hardware clock.