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.
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.
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.
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.
Is the breaking change going to happen in stable mid release cycle? Or at a major version upgrade?
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.
I think what pisses me off about this is that I have zero idea what this NEWS file is or where to read it.
It’s disgusting to see the Debian dev just flagrantly ignore this. Did they even warn the KeePsssXC devs they were doing this?
People keep arguing about this or that distro.
Linux distributions are just a collection of software, initial settings, and sometimes online repository.
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.
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.
I do miss windows audio whenever I interact with audio on my computer.
Upgrading Debian is something that needs to be done with care. The good news is that it is only necessary every 3 years
