Comment 17 for bug 363870

Note of interest, I upgraded to alsa 1.0.20 and the script is still needed, but now I can play many sources at the same time. Before this, I would have issues say i'd watch a youtube video and left the page open and try to use a different app that uses sound (would freeze and would have to kill the process, close firefox...).

I also still need to run the script to use headphones only (basically shutting off the speakers), but this solution works good enough for me.

I also tried the different other potential solutions discussed on other threads by editing /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and trying different combinations of these lines.
options snd-hda-intel model=hp-m4
options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=1
options snd-hda-intel model=hp-dv5

It makes the speakers work without the need for the hda-verb calls, but I couldn't get the headphones to work though so I decided to remove all of this and stick with the script.

I can't wait for manufacters to care more about Linux.