How to make my microphone unmuted on startup?
Solution 1:
From this previous answer:
sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
and add or change the following:
options snd-hda-intel model=auto enable=yes
BTW, if you prefer to use the gnome editor rather than text editing in the terminal, you could also run gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf. As far as I know, it is still better to run gksudo rather than sudo to start gnome/kde/unity applications with a GUI in super-user-mode.