Been using debian for more than a decade and “it just works” has become truer every year. It’s a good distro, if you have no principle objections against systemd (which I do, but am too lazy to do anything about).
The one thing I am not happy about: Audio drivers on a Desktop computer
works out of the box, but then messes up when selecting input devices from:
line in
headphones in
USB camera microphone
Audio in “sinks” - I believe those are channels allowing for active noise cancelling / preventing Audio feedback loops
I had a whole lot of trouble with pulseaudio selecting the correct source when trying to use my mic in the browser.
On a Laptop, I’ve never experienced such issues, as all devices are integrated (apart from the headphones jack, I guess).
Just when I got familiar enough with pulseaudio, they replaced it with “pipewire”, which fucked up output devices:
works on boot
when I plug in headphones: it messes up the Audio output to HDMI and I have to manually re-select (on desktop environment) the headphones
when I then touch the volume control (GUI), the output goes silent again and I have to select the “Port” headphones for the “Built-in Audio Analog Stereo” under “Output Devices”
drives me crazy since the last update - but it’s only an issue when using headphones, so for now I am living with it.
Im on openSuse Leap 15.5 and I moved to Pipewire back when I had 15.3 I believe. I had that issue where all output devices/input devices got smashed together. I stuck with it for couple of months and I believe the later versions fixed that. Now I am painfree and never bother with audio ever again. I used to have frequent pulseaudio crashes which is why I switched over to pipewire.
I mainly use the external hardware as a workaround for unwanted noise from the pc. It bothers me to no end to hear the mouse cursor scream into my headphone/speakers.
Been using debian for more than a decade and “it just works” has become truer every year. It’s a good distro, if you have no principle objections against systemd (which I do, but am too lazy to do anything about).
The one thing I am not happy about: Audio drivers on a Desktop computer
On a Laptop, I’ve never experienced such issues, as all devices are integrated (apart from the headphones jack, I guess).
Just when I got familiar enough with pulseaudio, they replaced it with “pipewire”, which fucked up output devices:
drives me crazy since the last update - but it’s only an issue when using headphones, so for now I am living with it.
Im on openSuse Leap 15.5 and I moved to Pipewire back when I had 15.3 I believe. I had that issue where all output devices/input devices got smashed together. I stuck with it for couple of months and I believe the later versions fixed that. Now I am painfree and never bother with audio ever again. I used to have frequent pulseaudio crashes which is why I switched over to pipewire.
I use an external usb dac/amp to handle all my audio switching and has been working flawlessly on debian. Could that be an option for you?
That seems like an ugly workaround - using external hardware to pretend that internally there’s only 1 device. Not my preferred method, to be honest.
I mainly use the external hardware as a workaround for unwanted noise from the pc. It bothers me to no end to hear the mouse cursor scream into my headphone/speakers.
Ouch - I have heard that symptom before - luckily not an issue on my hardware…