Disable start-up sound in 16.04

Solution 1:

At the login screen use the icon in the upper right to mute the sound. The setting is persistent.

Solution 2:

The file that plays when the login screen is shown is:

/usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/system-ready.ogg

Delete or rename it to prevent the sound from playing altogether, or replace/redirect it to make another sound play instead.

AFAIK this is not unique to 16.04, so this should also apply to all other versions of Ubuntu.

Solution 3:

I'm Using Ubuntu 16.10. The answer is surprisingly simple. From the Login screen, mute the sound (the setting is positioned in the top right corner) and that's it. Muting the login screen sound does not affect your session sound. I suggest you also try this for other versions of Ubuntu before installing additional software or tweaks.

Solution 4:

If the audio-icon is not visible at the login screen, try restarting the system. I have a fresh install of Xenial, and the audio controls only show at startup on initial boot, not on subsequent logouts.

Solution 5:

I found that this sound is played due to /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/libcanberra-ready-sound.desktop file, which is provided by gnome-session-canberra package. It says in description that it provides startup/shutdown sounds. Unfortunately, it's not possible to remove this package without breaking ubuntu-desktop package.

There are no knobs or settings to fix this issue.

The least invasive thing I found was to add X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false into /usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/libcanberra-ready-sound.desktop file.

I'll file some bugs about this (package should be removable without dependencies break, and there should be some normal way to disable sounds through symlinks in /etc or separate settings).

PS Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libcanberra/+bug/840858 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-meta/+bug/1714764