It’s pretty ironic to have problems with audio not recognizing headphones… on WINDOWS.
Multi-trillion (10^12) dollar company, btw.
(Both laptops are reasonably new.)
Linux audio issues were common during the transition to PulseAudio, but that was almost 20 years ago now.
And they continued until the transition to Pipewire.
Agreed, it was the next step from pulseaudio. To say it wasnt problematic is incorrect, as it had many problems and needed a lot of manual intervention.
Nowadays, pipewire appears alot more stable, even with the compatibility layers for when stuff uses pulseaudio.
I’ve been using Linux as my main operating system since 2010 and can’t recall having any audio issues. My desktop has 5 sound cards and they all work fine. I don’t use bluethooth for audio, so I guess that makes things easier.
I guess you’ve just been lucky.
Bluetooth have been kinda crap but also HDMI audio devices have been buggy. Analog in/out (3.5mm) has always worked for me.
HDMI audio depends on a proprietary license. The Linux drivers for it are, predictably, less robust.
I had a shortcut on my taskbar to terminate and reinitialize Pulse. It got used multiple times a day.
Hard to believe it’s been that long already. Linux has come so far. I remember fighting with audio issues. The most frequent issue I remember having is not being able to have two different programs use the sound card at the same time. Haha. So no system sounds while listening to music.
Two programs not being able to use the sound card at the same time is what happens when you set a program to use an ALSA hw or plughw device instead of PulseAudio or PipeWire.
Back when I first started using Linux, PulseAudio was not yet a thing. Back then I was using Mandriva/Mandrake and Redhat (prior to switching to Enterprise).
Yeah, but does your half-assed linux install come with the incredibly useful NoPilot? Huh?
Checkmate, linux nerds!
Whats nopilot 👽
It’s Microslop’s Artificial Idiocy
Ty
I imagine it’s rephrased “Copilot”.
Or outfazed copilot
Oh the idiocy is very real
The fun part about windows is you don’t know if it’s breaking because of the coke code from the 80’s or the vibe code from the ‘20s.
You forgot the Ballmer Peak code from the 00’s
Oh, yeah, cocaïne fuelled developers bouncing around. I’d forgotten about those.
Developers Developers Developers Developers
On Windows audio cuts out every so often.
Also an update broke a driver a bit ago and I had to edit the registry to fix it.
Linux is my comfort OS, everything just works.
Linux is my comfort OS, everything just works.
This exactly!
People who remember trying Linux 20 years ago look at me like I’m crazy. But Linux is so cozy, now!
To be fair, a lot of bluetooth headphone problems i had on my work laptop was just microsoft teams.
My most recent project requires me to use teams again -.-
It finds new ways to loose my peripheral devices ever day and adds effects to my camera that are not even available in the menu. I’m wondering if they try to get you to install it, or hate Mac users or Firefox or whatever. I mean it has been bad for all the time I knew it, but it seems to be getting even worse.
To be fair, a lot of bluetooth headphone problems i had on my work laptop was just that other terrible Microslop product.
First I tried Ubuntu. Then I tried Mint.
Two years later, still on Mint. It works, it doesn’t spy on me, I’m good.
Work requires Ubuntu. Still with Kubuntu. Works, doesn’t spy on me.
Brothers.
Debian, both at work and home.
Kids, you’re doing alright.
btw, Debian seems to be leaking maintainers and we need to do something about it, before a hostile takeover occurs.
Any source for this?
This was what I was going off of.
https://odysee.com/@BrodieRobertson:5/debian-linux-is-slowly-bleeding:6
There’s also this now that I look into it, which you can base your own thoughts upon.
Thanks for the links!
LOL Yeah, I mean Linux has always had audio problems, but I find that I can solve Linux related ones mine faster than on Windows (when I used that garbage). The time it took grew smaller as my knowledge grew. Pulseaudio will randomly shit the bed and take Alsa with it. So about three terminal commands and 5 minutes later my sound is often repaired. It is weird that a billions of dollars sort of company can’t get that shit right or make it a speedy fix at the very least. The troubleshooting tool would take fucking forever and often shit the bed. Touching the Powershell was cursed, but Linux made the terminal a blessed experience!
I did IT for my company on the side of my job for a year or two.
Prolific problem where windows would disable the microphone but every single “windows tool” said it was working perfectly fine except teams would say it was not available.
The only possible fix that someone on the internet found was to download an old sketchy file from a 3rd party source for an archived version of their “pre-help-assistant AI slop” audio troubleshooter, and run that and it would immediately say “oh, it is disabled, let me re-enable it for you”
Even though every tool, setting, and even registry said it was enabled.
Microsoft has the worst audio.
Oof, so it wasn’t JUST a problem is in the chair situation for me. I really thought that it was simply me being too inept at the time to, figure it out immediately when on Windows. I’d eventually get it to work but that would require restoring a backup of when audio worked previously. As I didn’t trust sketchy files, my experience having to fix our family PC due to…My parents downloading whatever looked cool, only for it to fill our hard drive with porn and slowing down the PC with too many processes that were collecting data or worse. ROFL
Linux: “I am the non-janky OS now!”
Hot take: There is not now, nor has there ever been, a non-janky OS.
Some Linux distributions are absolutely less janky than Windows at the moment, though, absolutely.
I haven’t used a mac in a few years, but it was pretty jank-free the last time I tried it, but I’m certain the situation there has gotten worse.
Nah I’m on Sequoia on a maybe 3 or 4 year old MBP and it’s still smooth as silk for me
Linux revoked my mic permissions in the middle of a call today, on Google Meet. Happened before on Zoom.
I have not root-caused it to see if there was flaky hardware or what.
Ok, this prompted me to root-cause the issue. A bad cable between laptop and USB dock seems most likely. Hardware issue, not Linux!
Most machines have issues with the headset headphones.
Windows, Mac, Linux.
Many headphones that are headsets will pair as a dual device with the crappy two way audio that sounds like you just connected to your cars Bluetooth from 2005x
I remember when I used to have audio problems all the time, including headphones literally just not even working somehow. Then I switched to Linux.
Uh huh uh huh uh huh… call me when ALSAmixer is no longer needed to unmute the TOSLINK output on a new install because who the fuck knows why it’s muted by default in ALSA and that setting is not surfaced anywhere in the UI.
I would make fun of you for using toslink but eARC is such a scam that I don’t know why they didn’t just bother to upgrade toslink anyway.
I think they’re lying when they say it can’t handle the bandwidth. It’s a fricken fiber optic cable, just bump the transmitter.
I had a Samsung TV and Samsung home theater in a box as my first 4k setup. The last update to the TV broke eARC.
Just wanted to throw out at every opportunity why I will not buy a Samsung anything.
Why is eARC a scam? Doesn’t it carry higher audio bitrates than optical?
So… what do you use for audio output on a desktop? Because I feed my monitor with the DisplayPort output from my graphics card, and I’m definitely not running a separate HDMI just for the audio signal. Even with 5.1 channel outputs, the 3.5mm audio on the motherboard is not up to the quality of the optical audio output, and besides that’s 5 copper cables to run instead of one fiber. My soundbar has an optical input. The optical output is the only thing that makes sense.
What is any of this?
Heh, so ALSA has kind of been the audio architecture for Linux distros since forever.
Pulse Audio was supposed to modernize audio for Linux and ultimately replace ALSA.
But last time I installed Linux on my desktop, I couldn’t get audio output from my motherboard’s TOSLINK S/PDIF port no matter which settings I changed in the GUI, uninstalled/reinstalled drivers and codecs and whatnot, etc.
Nothing made any difference until I eventually found some forum post which suggested using ALSAmixer to check the settings for various audio channels. ALSAmixer is not typically installed by default and not commonly used anymore, but it was the only tool that could unmute the digital audio output channel that served the TOSLINK port - that functionality was not present anywhere else in any of the configuration options. Pulse appeared to be in control of the system audio hardware, but in reality it was just sitting on top of and still relying on ALSA to handle the back end. Also, whoever set ALSA to mute some audio channels by default on a clean install… wtf dude, that shit just makes people think their hardware isn’t properly supported and they have a driver issue.
The point being, ALSA was supposed to be deprecated years ago and all of the old audio issues resolved and modernized with a new architecture, but… I’ll believe it when I see it, when whatever the new thing is actually proves itself to be an all-singing, all-dancing audio architecture. I’ve seen this rodeo before, and last time I checked it was still a clownshow.
Interesting. Thanks for explaining.
Where is this meme from?
The movie “Legally Blonde.” Reese Witherspoon’s character gets into Harvard to be closer with the male, her ex.
He, astonished, asks for clarification if she got into Harvard, and she responds with the bottom text.
Ha!
My work laptop is mandated win11.
I have working headphones.
I have working headphones set that go through a dock and through a KVM and through 20 feet of USB and three chained hubs between said laptop and my earballs.
They also switch beautifully over to the Nobara (fedora) I’ve installed, and even back to this ancient ring-fenced win7 physical I have.
Hell; I only had issues last year because I got a janky USB extension and the Dell cube dock is a piece of actual shit and the two couldn’t cope.
What do I win with a ugreen usb3 sound dev and an apple 3.5mm earpods headphones plugged in? I mean, aside from a working comms rig.
What does this mean? I’ve never had this problem on windows…













