6 mo. ago • 98%

And Debian is supposed to be the stable one

The last two upgrades have broken my audio setup.

First the options for Network Server and Network Access in paprefs were greyed out and my sinks disappeared after upgrading to bookworm. I just had to create a link to an existing file and it was working again but, it's weird that it was needed in the first place. Pretty sure it has something to do with the change from pulseaudio to pipewire but I'm not very up to date on that subject and I just want to have my current setup to continue working.

Then yesterday I just launch a simple apt-get upgrade and after rebooting my sinks disappeared again. The network options in paprefs were still available, but changing them did nothing. I had to create the file ~/.config/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf.d/10-gsettings.conf and stuff it with "pulse.cmd = [ { cmd = "load-module" args = "module-gsettings" flags = [ "nofail" ] } ]" in order to have my sinks back.

I know it's not only a Debian thing, as I can see this happening to people on Arch forums, but as Debian is supposed to be the "stable" one, I find it amusing that a simple upgrade can break your sound.

48 comments

Alternatively,

62
The changes to linux audio lately are a bit of a mess. Wireplumber completely changed their config format with 5.0 and it just stopped launching if you had v4 configs.

I do appreciate that we're not stuck with pulseaudio anymore though so I really shouldn't complain.

32
- Mint is still on pulse, but thankfully there was someone out there that had a nice script that switches you to pipewire and easy effects so I did that.
  
  ~~(I tried to find that script again but can't find it. Pretty sure it was on a forum somewhere if anyone needs to find it.)~~
  
  Found it: https://github.com/Rigel2118/pipewire-installation-kit-for-linuxmint
  
  10
  
  Thanks to pipewire's pulseaudio emulation transitioning from one to the other is effectively seamless. Just install the pipewire pulseaudio package (it's tiny) after installing the rest of pipewire and apps that depend on pulse just work.
  
  11
Out of curiosity why do you have your audio over the network? Just curious

24
- Mainly because of bluetooth headphones with multiple computers. That way they are paired to only one computer and I can use them with other computers at the same time. Just right click on paprefs system tray icon, change the sink and the audio is sent somewhere else. I know it's now possible to have bluetooth headphones that have multiple connections but it wasn't the case a few years ago and I still find it much more useful this way.
  
  But it's also useful when I have my laptop near my main computer and want to use its much better speakers instead of the crappy ones on the laptop. Right click, select another sink, and that's it.
  
  It's just nice to have the option to send the audio from one computer to another. It's a shame that it's apparently a niche thing.
  
  44
  
  I've also used pulseaudio for this sort of things in the past, it's very flexible and works rather well!
  
  12
  
  I’ve never heard of someone doing something like this before, but it sounds like it could have some pretty cool downstream applications (thinking Bluetooth speakers)
  
  With your setup would it be possible to pair your headphones to your phone (iPhone in my case) and be able to pass audio from different computers to a central one that my phone could then relay to my headphones?
  
  I often walk around my house/yard while listening to something playing on my laptop/desktop. And if I get too far from the source, it breaks the Bluetooth connection. So I usually end up having to drag my laptop around the yard with me. A much nicer solution would be to have my phone on my person, and use the wifi to keep connected to my “audio source” without needing proximity to the actual pc playing the sound.
  
  2
  
  @pedz
  I'm on the same point. Until i had my multi connection bluetooth I worked the same way. The problem now. It does not work that nice.
  I try currently to switch back. But my goal currently is using my #Kodi Mediacenter. But Kodi sems still using alsa. It was a hack to get simultaniousl y output with a bluetooth speaker. (For Radio in other rooms)
  I gave up this network audio setup for Kodi.
  
  @MrWafflesNBacon
  
  1
  
  That's a cool use case
  
  1
  
  Does this give network latency on top of Bluetooth latency or does the network somehow "handshake" it with the Bluetooth on the devices you're listening to?
  
  1
last time i updated Debian it blew up my bootloader rofl

12
- Hehe, I knew that if I wanted stability I had to stay on Slackware! That's the price we have to pay to use a bleeding edge distro like Debian where everything is fast paced. 😏
  
  14
- Average linux experience is the "hey I think im getting used to this OS now!" followed by "where's my bootloader"
  
  5
It'll also break all your keepassxc plugins soon. Because debian version to version compatibility is not a priority. They also don't care if them breaking something triggers a ton of upstream bug reports, because it will only "be painful for a year"

Linus for the kernel has a strict "don't break userspace" policy, and Debian has a "break things whenever you want, and just blame the user for not reading the news file" policy.

10
- Is the breaking change going to happen in stable mid release cycle? Or at a major version upgrade?
  
  0
  
  IMO it doesn't matter. People don't read news on updates. Should they? Yes. Do they? No. Should they have to? Also no.
  
  Linus's point is to never blame the end user for something the kernel changed. If you want software to have widespread adoption, adding homework to simple updates isn't how you do it. People don't want a hobby or something to babysit, they want an operating system. Debian will go out of their way to make in-release updates go as smooth as possible, but are willing to through out entire parts of functioning packages between releases.
  
  But this isn't even about breaking things for the end user. This will create excessive amounts of noise on the upstream repo. People will say "Hey! My keepassxc broke!" and they report it to keepassxc, and not to Debian. To which keepassxc just has to constantly reply "no, debian changed this on you, this is not a bug." If Debian had to deal with the fall out of their own decisions, I would say "yeah, im not sure if i agree with the decision, but oh well"... But they are increasing the workload for other teams.
  
  It is already happening. The debian dev's stance is "This will be painful for a year." But it will be painful for keepassxc, NOT debian. The keepassxc devs asked them to not do this. Debian's response might as well be "Im inflicting this pain on you, even though you've asked me not to. But on the plus side, it won't hurt me at all and it will only last a year for you." If they really have that much disdain for the project, they should just stop packaging it altogether.
  
  So yeah, debian has the legal right to do whatever they want because keepassxc is open source. but "just because I can, and you cant legally stop me, and its extra work for you, not me" is kind of a jerk move. This is what drives FOSS contributors to get burnt out and abandon otherwise good projects.
  
  11
  
  It's in testing and/or sid atm but the keepass dev has argued back and forth with the debian maintainer who basically just said "suck it up buttercup" and refused to change back, so it'll cause a lot of fun times once it lands in the next debian release lol
  
  1
I updated the kernel and for some reason my ubuntu becomes unable to find how to use the network.

After going in circles it was much easier to just go back to the previous kernel.

5
- Double check if you have the -modules and/or -modules-extra installed for that version of the kernel. Literally had this issue at work on a 14.04 (sigh, I know) box.
  
  1
I got the same issue months ago, with Mint. I have a script to switch audio outputs, and it stopped working after... apt upgrade! Apparently what used to be called "hdmi-stereo" is now "hdmi-stereo-extra1", no idea why.

In the case of my script, once I got what was going on, I solved it with a simple "if" statement:

if [[ $(pactl list sinks | grep extra) == "" ]] then declare -g mainProfile="hdmi-stereo" else declare -g mainProfile="hdmi-stereo-extra1" fi

(My system uses pulseaudio. Don't ask me why. I'm not touching it with a 3m pole.)
5
on artix linux it couldnt be less stable, i think its been around 2 years since pipewire has failed to work but maybe im just one of the lucky ones

5
- I switched from artix to arch because of this
  
  2
- It's possible to make it work under artix.i was using pipewire but u need to do some modififictions to config files.
  
  1
okay interesting. even fedora has been more stable to me than this (during the same version)

3
People keep arguing about this or that distro.

Linux distributions are just a collection of software, initial settings, and sometimes online repository.

2
- Are you trying to imply that all distributions are actually the same because of that? Because Debian's repositories and philosophies are definitely extremely different than something like Arch.
  
  12
  
  Not at all. I'm arguing that often, the issues, and fixes, are not distribution-dependant. Which is a good thing; it means we can go to arch forum and find fixes that can be applied in other distros most of the time, for example.
  
  But people keep pitting them against each other like they're some form of evolved lifeforms that necessarily have to erase others, when a lot of the issues are just generic software issues.
  
  And, since this is already a justification post I'll take the lead and note that it does not mean that there is no distribution-specific issues. Of course there are. The point is that most software issue in distribution X will have the same cause and fix in distribution Y, and often have nothing to do with either specific distributions.
  
  9
NixOS — odds are it won't work, but when it does it'll probably stay working.

1
I do miss windows audio whenever I interact with audio on my computer.

1
Upgrading Debian is something that needs to be done with care. The good news is that it is only necessary every 3 years

1
Yeah... I only use Debian server side. Despite it's flaws I'd say Ubuntu is the better desktop option if you don't want to go down the whole Arch route.

0
- Bah. I've been using Linux for 25 years, started with a derivative of Slackware, then used Slackware for about a decade, and switched to Debian. I used 5.25" floppies and manually set IRQs so I'm quite comfortable with Debian and tinkering in general.
  
  For friends and family I prefer LMDE. Snap packages can go to hell.
  
  4
- Debian for servers. Fedora for desktops. That’s my philosophy.
  
  2

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