Careful, there. It’s a slippery slope. Today you’re changing disk settings and dual booting. Tomorrow, you might just accidentally become a kernel hacker.
Grumph, this is very frustrating. I can get my headphones to talk to Ubuntu. They work fine for watching netflix and listening to some music player that installed with the package. And I can get audacity to work fine. But I can’t get Audacity to recognize my headphones, which means I mostly can’t use Audacity on the laptop. (And that’s definitely a thing I want to do on my travel laptop.)
I’ve tried googling, and I see other people have had similar problems. And there are two sets of answers, “have you tried restarting audacity/rescanning the audio sources?” and “why isn’t this a big deal that people have addressed?”
Why yes, I have tried restarting audacity after the headphones are up and running. Audacity is fussy, and I need to do that on my Mac and on the Windows partition, too. It doesn’t work. And there are obviously other people having the same problem. But I can’t find a solution.
I’ve had some similar issues, but not with audacity, because I don’t use it. Mostly with Zoom, but also just watching videos in the browser.
I frequently need to open my audio mixer (the program that changes volumes and stuff), and tell it which audio device to use by default, and for different programs. In that program I can tell it the output for Firefox (for example) is my headphones and the input is the internal microphone. Sometimes it doesn’t work, for example even though the output for Zoom is set as my headphones, but Zoom audio actually doesn’t go anywhere.
It used to be necessary with Zoom, but it seems better lately, is that the audio input/output devices have to be connected before I start Zoom. I have no idea if audacity might suffer from similar bugs.
Finally, sometimes I have to kick wireplumber to get things going. Fortunately this is easy. At the command line I run systemctl --user restart wireplumber
I don’t know if any of these will fix your problem, but they’re easy things to try.
I’ve been burned twice by this hype about Linux. It’s like Bullwinkle the moose going “this time for sure!” I fully appreciate the dislike of Windows 11, but what should I call myself after being burned three times?
What issue have you had? Other than the audio problem, I’m liking it. It’s quiet. (It doesn’t have all the random stuff going on in the background and to the side that windows has.) I can find all my files again. Mostly I’ve just used it for browsing the web and Netflix and YouTube, i admit. I downloaded open office, but so far just used Google docs, which is a form of “browsing the web”.
But everything I’ve tried to do has been straightforward. Like, i wanted to attach headphones, and found a gear icon, and there was the Bluetooth set up.
I can see a way to select the headphones, and to test that, but not to set up different audio for different programs. What should i be looking for?
The issues have been things like lack of support for certain hardware, which required elaborate searches for just the right drivers, which sometimes required a detailed investigation of the actual chipset being used by the device. Plus my general unfamiliarity with the obscure Unix-like incantations to get various things done that seem almost deliberately designed to confound the user. I mean, I’m a techie at heart, but I’ve had zero experience with Unix.
Plus, there are so many versions of Linux, and among them, there’s not even a consistent GUI – there’s a multitude of choices. It sounds like a nightmare for anyone but a nerdy hobbyist, and my experience has been that that’s exactly what it is. Whereas Windows mostly just works, and if it doesn’t do something right, I generally have enough experience with it to know how to fix it.
Another factor is that one of the main reasons I bought the Windows 11 laptop was because my online tax filing software no longer runs on Windows 7. That software supports many different platforms including Macs and Android, but not Unix.
Windows costs money, either directly or indirectly in the cost of a new computer. Linux is free. My experience has been that the old adage of “you get what you pay for” is true here. Linux requires a lot of fiddling around; Windows just works.
I’m playing with Linux because Windows stopped just working for me.
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the directory structure has gotten so confusing that i can’t find my files.
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i also have weird sound issues in Windows, because there are about 8 places to adjust the sound, and if you don’t find the right one, it may not work.
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Windows removed my files from my hard drive. They were “backed up” in “the cloud”. And there i was, on vacation, in a lovely Italian castle with walls that are stone and many feet thick, and none of the files I’d carefully packed to with with on vacation could be accessed, because for some reason, i didn’t have perfect Internet service.
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after that, i managed to convince Windows to leave a copy of my files on the hard drive. But i started getting threatening notes from M$ that my free backup space was full, and I’d i didn’t buy more they would delete my files.
I was, ultimately, able to stop it from “backing up” my files at all, but now it constantly nags me about “your files aren’t backed up”, and “didn’t you want to finish setting up your computer”.
So I’m looking at the alternatives. So far, the default Ubuntu drivers are mostly doing everything fine. And the interface is similar to the interface on both my Mac and my various PCs. So really, everything has been quite intuitive. There’s even an app store where i can download most of what i want to use I just have this annoying issue with Audacity.
And there’s free and free. Free stuff from a company that wants you to buy something else often sucks. But open source software is often excellent. Audacity is better than any of the paid alternatives, as best as i can tell.
Mind you, i don’t need to use any Windows-only software on this machine.
Most of what you’re mentioning here seems specifically related to the new stuff in Windows 11. My “real” computing is still on Windows 7, and I’m in the process of disabling many of those “features” in Windows 11. I think “OneDrive” is still active and that’s the next one I’ve gotta kill!
Yes, i was perfectly satisfied having my travel laptop running Windows 10. But Ubuntu is actively supported and has regular security updates.
If I’d had to fiddle to get the track pad to work, it anything like that, it would have been a non-starter. But it’s been surprisingly easy.
Except for getting audacity to talk to my headphones. But honestly, i love audacity, but it’s fussy about audio output, and it took me some experimentation to get it to work on both my Mac and my windows laptop. And when i tried a different set of headphones on Windows, i had to fiddle again. So i haven’t given up.
Exactly. Linux often “just works” too, when SOMEBODY pays for it.
Android is Linux and is quite a solid operating system these days. Your router, TV, e-reader, BluRay player, etc. are probably also Linux. Chromebooks are Linux. SteamOS is also Linux. Your car might be too. Those usually “just work”. But in those cases, you’re paying for the hardware, which subsidizes the Linux customization for those devices.
When you install a free, non corporate Linux on a machine sold by someone else, you don’t really get the benefits of that first party customization and testing. Dell and Framework and System76 used to sell a few Linux specific machines that they preload with drivers and such, but not sure if they still do. And in those cases they’re still going with some third party community distro instead of their own.
Linux is hodgepodge of miscellaneous corporate needs and indie hacker passion projects, with no one group responsible for overall polish and especially UI. Sometimes it works but often it’s annoying, and different fistros will have different strengths and flaws with nobody really responsible for it.
That’s why I’m really excited about the Steam Machine; it would be the first consumer desktop PC with first class Linux support directly from its manufacturer. But that’s a gaming console first and PC second, so it probably wouldn’t be any better at office-ing than any other generic Linux PC, sadly.
Oh yeah, it can be confusing. The desired audio input/output devices must exist—you can’t set them to a device that is not currently connected. The program that is making (or hearing) the sounds must be running and have connected to the audio system.
Try this, just to see if things are working. Connect your headphones. Then go into the audio mixer and you should be able to switch the default between different devices. If this isn’t reasonably obvious, then try a different audio mixer. (When I search for “mixer” in my progam list I see seven.) In KDE I can also go to system settings, and then sound.
If that seems to work, then try the next step.
Open a video or something in your browser that will play some sound. In the audio mixer you should see your browser under “Playback Streams” or something similar. There should be an option to send the sound to your built-in speakers or headphones.
For Zoom I also see it listed under “Recording Streams” and I can adjust the microphone source. That lets me do combo things, like my laptop’s builtin microphone for speaking, but my wired headset for listening.
I started audacity to see what that looks like, and it might be more complicated. Under edit and preferences there is an audio setting section. In there I can see playback is set to the default devices. There are other options which include my USB headset, and the analog output of my sound chip. Similar for recording devices.
All of the stuff I’ve talked about in the audio mixer probably requires that audacity is set for “pipewire” output (wireplumber \approx pipewire). So maybe you can pick your headphones directly in audacity. If they’re bluetooth, then you probably do need to go through pipewire.
ETA: I just unplugged my USB headset, and audacity did not notice they disappeared, so it is still showing them as an option. That means that they probably do need to be connected before audacity starts.
If you have specific questions, let me know, and I can experiment, and then try to explain.
I know they are. One reason I know is that on my media player, “Movie” and “movie” for example are completely different names. This technocratic obsession with character encoding rather than natural human interpretation is one of a bazillion things I hate about Linux, besides the fact that, for me, it has never fucking worked well enough to be actually useful.
What I meant to say here is that it runs on Macs and Android (and also iOS so it runs on iPhones and iPads) but not Linux. I don’t know why it doesn’t support Linux since it supports just about everything else. Maybe the developers feel the same way about Linux as I do! 
What’s that old expression – once bitten, twice shy! For me and Linux, it needs to be revised to “twice bitten, never again!”
I totally believe all the positive experiences with Linux being related here, and I also believe I could have a positive experience with it myself for many purposes, but it would take more effort than I care to put in. Also, I depend on Microsoft Office for at least a few essential things. So for many purposes I’m pretty much stuck with Windows. I can only hope that a few people at Microsoft wake up and continue the tradition of following each shitty OS with a relatively good one. I have hopes for Windows 12. But if they continue their strategy of considering the OS as just “a service” and that everything is in “the cloud”, then fuck them too. Maybe I’ll get a Mac.
@puzzlegal install a package called pavucontrol. When you run that program, you should be able to switch stuff around under the “Playback” tab. There is also a utility called qpwgraph which is occasionally useful, especially if you are doing audio stuff.
You know you can enable case-insensitive filenames in Linux, right? “Linux” is just a kernel; there may be occasional issues, but often the problem lies with the distro or system using it.
Of course I don’t know that. That’s part of my point. I’d have to spend a year in Linux class to learn everything I needed to know to the level that I know Windows. I don’t have time for that. And I have no control over this behaviour in my media player. I’ve actually spent some frustrating time trying to find a movie that I knew I had but it wasn’t appearing on the alphabetically ordered list, only to find that it was because the first character was lower case. Shit like this has not endeared me to Linux.
I apologize: I did not mean to sound brusque. I only meant that that sounds like a problem with the media player’s user interface, not like a problem with Linux. Maybe they did not set some filesystem options, or it, more probably, could have been a higher-level problem with their own software (got to use the correct collation algorithm), or they just never thought of it at all—but they should know about using Linux to that level, if they are going to build it into an ergonomic and reliable product.
Here is something that came up just the other day: some guy’s stylus did not work quite right under Ubuntu Linux, but it worked OK in Arch Linux, if I understood him correctly. I can see how that might not endear someone to Linux, even if it is often just a matter of needing to apply updates. It also goes to show that “Linux” is a tad nebulous.
Wolfpup, please stick with Windows. No one is going to force you off of your own OS. As much as I think its risky to continue with Win 7, I assure you, there is no one who’ll change your computing habits but yourself. Relearning a whole new OS is not for everyone. This is not your fault that you are having difficulties and its perfectly fine to stick with what you are familiar. If you want to try Linux, I would heed my up thread advice:
However I must add this. One of the main selling points about Linux (or any Open Source Software) is that it can be (and it can function) however you want it to be, look, and act. That Linux allows for total, in-depth, 100%, tinkering, might not be important for you; but this is important for the Linux community.
Not everyone has the same needs, wants, or desires. This is why there are so many different versions of Linux itself. They all serve special niche interests and jobs. Its all fine.
I use StudioTax too. There’s many options for Linux users to run Windows software. I run this one through a VM.
However if it was a stand alone .exe or “Portable” .zip I would just use Wine or -more commonly now- through Valve’s Proton (you can add any windows application/program/software to your Steam library). Valve has made running stand alone windows programs as easy as running like any other game.
(“Add non-Steam game” to your library. Then right click “properties” > “compatibility” > select a stable version of Proton)