Audio in Silverblue, Thinkpad X1 Generation 7

I’ve got two Thinkpad X1 Generation 7 to muck about with. On one I’ve installed Fedora 31 Workstation. On the other I’ve installed Fedora Silverblue. On the Silverblue instance I’ve created an ostree for both F31 and F32. Both ostree, when booted into them, show audio as “dummy output”.

I’m wondering if there is a package I should have installed? Looking at this post makes you think I should install alsa-firmware but I don’t have that on the Fedora 31 Workstation machine and I do have functioning audio.

Not sure if this is any clue, but there are only three system groups on the silverblue install, while on my workstation install there are many more. I’m wondering if pulseaudio is installed fine, and the kernel is fine, but it’s coming down to a permissions issue.

A comparison of loaded kernel modules shows that workstation and silverblue are the same, so the kernel is loading the right modules for the hardare.

I also have a Thinkpad X1 7th Gen. For me, audio works without adding any extra packages on a Fedora Silverblue 31 installation, if I add a /etc/modprobe/alsa.conf with this content:

options snd-intel-dspcfg dsp_driver=1

I still did not get the internal microphone, or microphone via headphone jack to work, so for calls I use a Bluetooth headset instead.

On both systems I see the same thing:

[agd@enoch ~]$ sudo lspci -vvv -s 00:1f.3
[sudo] password for agd: 
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Device 02c8 (prog-if 80)
	Subsystem: Lenovo Device 2292
	Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 64
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
	Region 0: Memory at ea23c000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Region 4: Memory at ea000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
	Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
		Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=55mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold+)
		Status: D0 NoSoftRst+ PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
	Capabilities: [80] Vendor Specific Information: Len=14 <?>
	Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
		Address: 0000000000000000  Data: 0000
	Kernel driver in use: sof-audio-pci
	Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel, snd_soc_skl, snd_sof_pci

@bkhl it looks like by adding that I can get audio output… now I’m super curious about why I don’t have to do that on Fedora 31 or 32 Workstation, but I do have to do it on Silverblue…?