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I am on Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS running i3wm.

~ [I] ➜ lsb_release -a 
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
Release:    18.04
Codename:   bionic
~ [I] ➜ i3 --version
i3 version 4.14.1 (2017-09-24) © 2009 Michael Stapelberg and contributors

I frequently use Zoom for meetings in the current pandemic situation and am able to use its screensharing facilities during meetings. However, as soon as someone (either a participant or I) attempts to annotate something on my screen that is being shared, the window manager crashes and blacks out. Then no one is able to see anything on my screen (including me). I can get a terminal using Ctrl-Alt-FX combination but have not able to get the window manager restarted. Usually I then have to restart my machine.

This problem does not happen if I am using the normal GNOME window manager (available as a choice when logging in). Has anyone else experienced this problem or can suggest a fix? I would really like to continue using i3wm when starting a Zoom meeting rather than having to log-out and in each time I need to attend a meeting.

I am running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. I was having USB audio mutes below 35 % issue. So I followed the instructions at over here to fix it. And it worked. But now internal speakers don't work anymore.

user@hp-elitedesk:~$ pactl list short sinks
0   alsa_output.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00.analog-stereo    module-alsa-card.c  s16le 2ch 44100Hz   SUSPENDED 

On the other hand PulseAudio does detect the card:

user@hp-elitedesk:~$ pactl list short cards 0   
alsa_card.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00    module-alsa-card.c 1    
alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1f.3  module-alsa-card.c 

Doing sudo alsa force-reload didn't work. What can do to get my internal speakers working again?

It seems its not the first time someones internal speakers stopped working after following Chris Jean's post. I found another user on this question for whom the same thing happened. ALSA seems to be detecting the card as well.

UPDATE

I checked the output of pacmd dump and saw this:

### Configuration dump generated at Fri Oct  5 14:16:21 2018

load-module module-device-restore
load-module module-stream-restore
load-module module-card-restore
load-module module-augment-properties
load-module module-switch-on-port-available
load-module module-switch-on-connect
load-module module-udev-detect
load-module module-alsa-card device_id="1" name="usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00" card_name="alsa_card.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00" namereg_fail=false tsched=yes fixed_latency_range=no ignore_dB=no deferred_volume=yes use_ucm=yes card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1"
load-module module-alsa-card device_id="0" name="pci-0000_00_1f.3" card_name="alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1f.3" namereg_fail=false tsched=yes fixed_latency_range=no ignore_dB=no deferred_volume=yes use_ucm=yes card_properties="module-udev-detect.discovered=1"
load-module module-bluetooth-policy
load-module module-bluetooth-discover
load-module module-bluez5-discover
load-module module-native-protocol-unix
load-module module-default-device-restore
load-module module-rescue-streams
load-module module-always-sink
load-module module-intended-roles
load-module module-suspend-on-idle
load-module module-console-kit
load-module module-systemd-login
load-module module-position-event-sounds
load-module module-role-cork
load-module module-filter-heuristics
load-module module-filter-apply
load-module module-cli-protocol-unix

set-sink-volume alsa_output.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00.analog-stereo 0x7f79
set-sink-mute alsa_output.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00.analog-stereo no
suspend-sink alsa_output.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00.analog-stereo no

set-source-volume alsa_output.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00.analog-stereo.monitor 0x10000
set-source-mute alsa_output.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00.analog-stereo.monitor no
suspend-source alsa_output.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00.analog-stereo.monitor no
set-source-volume alsa_input.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00.analog-mono 0x66a9
set-source-mute alsa_input.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00.analog-mono no
suspend-source alsa_input.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00.analog-mono yes

set-card-profile alsa_card.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00 output:analog-stereo+input:analog-mono
set-card-profile alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1f.3 off

set-default-sink alsa_output.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00.analog-stereo
set-default-source alsa_input.usb-C-Media_Electronics_Inc._Microsoft_LifeChat_LX-3000-00.analog-mono

### EOF

So clearly the set-card-profile command is the issue because its not loading a profile. So then I hunted for the profile definition in the output of pactl list and then ran:

pacmd set-card-profile alsa_card.pci-0000_00_1f.3 output:analog-stereo+input:analog-stereo

This fixed the problem and brought the sink bank. But I don't want to run this each time after I boot. Is there a work around? I realized something must be going wrong when pulseaudio is loading up. Hence, I ran it from terminal:

user@hp-elitedesk:i3$ pulseaudio 
E: [pulseaudio] alsa-mixer.c: [/usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output.conf.common:129] Invalid value for volume-limit
E: [pulseaudio] alsa-mixer.c: [/usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output.conf.common:129] Invalid value for volume-limit
E: [pulseaudio] alsa-mixer.c: [/usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/paths/analog-output.conf.common:129] Invalid value for volume-limit

So the suggested edit of adding volume-limit in Chris Jean's post is causing an issue. I removed the line, and then there was no problem. On the other removing that line caused the audio mute below 35% to reappear.

Does anyone know of a fix/workaround? It looks like if I want to fix the audio mute issue, then I will need to add that command to some startup script.

So after much trial and error I have managed to get X11 forwarding work. My desktop in the office is Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and I use XQuartz to ssh in from my MacBook Pro. When I ssh in, I get the following on the terminal:

Warning: No xauth data; using fake authentication data for X11 forwarding.
Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-128-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

I know the X11 forwarding is working because I can get FireFox to forward, but its extremely slow and buggy.

But I cannot get Google Chrome to forward. The terminal gives the following on running the command google-chrome:

ATTENTION: default value of option force_s3tc_enable overridden by environment.
libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
[10497:10497:0702/053002.891053:ERROR:gl_context_glx.cc(227)] Couldn't make context current with X drawable.
[10497:10497:0702/053002.891090:ERROR:gpu_info_collector.cc(63)] gl::GLContext::MakeCurrent() failed
[10455:10549:0702/053003.740008:ERROR:bus.cc(394)] Failed to connect to the bus: Could not parse server address: Unknown address type (examples of valid types are "tcp" and on UNIX "unix")

and XQuartz just displays a blank window. On ctrl-cing the process and exiting the terminal further spews more error messages (which I can post if required). But can someone help me out and tell me what I am doing wrong or if I have not got x11 forwarding set up properly? I basically followed the procedure here (also xauth was already installed for me) so I just edited the configuration files.