possibly had them already on hold, since i followed your guide-manual, but it may have been "overwritten" by a sneaky update.
(or possiblier the apt-mark hold was not fully implemented since it might have missed the pulseaudio and hence the new updates could fool me around)

thanks ever so much, invaluable help.

it is just loosely connected...
when you uninstalling pipewire, it automatically installs pulseaudio for you , and viceversa.
can someone please offer a highway out of this dilemma?

Since the topic is "The Absurdist Comedy", it is not "just loosely connected".

Set on hold unwanted packages, for example:

sudo apt-mark hold pulseaudio* pipewire* wireplumber* 

Then remove them.

Deleting pulseaudio/pipwire-pulse loop
_https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=7598

but am using devuan 7 and have noticed in latest "updates" the pipewire crept back in.

now it functions like on raspi os it seems , when you uninstalling pipewire, it automatically installs pulseaudio for you , and viceversa.

can someone please offer a highway out of this dilemma? thanks.

sudo apt remove pipewire
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libconfig++15  liblua5.5-0  libpipewire-0.3-modules  libwireplumber-0.5-0
  libffado2      libopenfec1  libroc0.4                pipewire-bin
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.

Installing dependencies:
  pulseaudio

Suggested packages:
  pavumeter  pavucontrol  paprefs

Recommended packages:
  dbus-user-session

REMOVING:
  pipewire  pipewire-pulse  wireplumber

Summary:
  Upgrading: 0, Installing: 1, Removing: 3, Not Upgrading: 8
  Download size: 1,195 kB
  Space needed: 5,734 kB / 22.6 GB available

Continue? [Y/n] 
Get:1 http://deb.devuan.org/merged freia/main amd64 pulseaudio amd64 17.0+dfsg1-3 [1,195 kB]
Fetched 1,195 kB in 5s (231 kB/s)     
(Reading database… 567154 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing wireplumber (0.5.17-1)…
Selecting previously unselected package pulseaudio.
(Reading database… 566991 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack …/pulseaudio_17.0+dfsg1-3_amd64.deb…
Unpacking pulseaudio (17.0+dfsg1-3)…
dpkg: pipewire-pulse: dependency problems, but removing anyway as requested:
 plasma-pa depends on pipewire-pulse | pulseaudio; however:
  Package pipewire-pulse is to be removed.
  Package pulseaudio is not configured yet.
 libcanberra-pulse:amd64 depends on pipewire-pulse | pulseaudio; however:
  Package pipewire-pulse is to be removed.
  Package pulseaudio is not configured yet.

(Reading database… 567234 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing pipewire-pulse (1.6.9-2)…
Removing pipewire:amd64 (1.6.9-2)…
Setting up pulseaudio (17.0+dfsg1-3)…
Processing triggers for libglib2.0-0t64:i386 (2.90.0-1)…
Processing triggers for dbus (1.16.2-5devuan1+b1)…
Processing triggers for man-db (2.13.1-1)…
Processing triggers for libglib2.0-0t64:amd64 (2.90.0-1)…

sudo apt remove pulseaudio
Installing dependencies:        
  pipewire  pipewire-pulse  wireplumber

Suggested packages:
  libspa-0.2-libcamera  wireplumber-doc

REMOVING:
  pulseaudio

Summary:
  Upgrading: 0, Installing: 3, Removing: 1, Not Upgrading: 8
  Download size: 277 kB
  Freed space: 5,734 kB

Continue? [Y/n] 
Get:1 http://deb.devuan.org/merged freia/main amd64 pipewire amd64 1.6.9-2 [117 kB]
Get:2 http://deb.devuan.org/merged freia/main amd64 pipewire-pulse amd64 1.6.9-2 [15.4 kB]
Get:3 http://deb.devuan.org/merged freia/main amd64 wireplumber amd64 0.5.17-1 [144 kB]
Fetched 277 kB in 4s (64.7 kB/s)     
Selecting previously unselected package pipewire:amd64.
(Reading database… 567213 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack …/pipewire_1.6.9-2_amd64.deb…
Unpacking pipewire:amd64 (1.6.9-2)…
Selecting previously unselected package pipewire-pulse.
Preparing to unpack …/pipewire-pulse_1.6.9-2_amd64.deb…
Unpacking pipewire-pulse (1.6.9-2)…
dpkg: pulseaudio: dependency problems, but removing anyway as requested:
 plasma-pa depends on pipewire-pulse | pulseaudio; however:
  Package pipewire-pulse is not configured yet.
  Package pulseaudio is to be removed.
 libcanberra-pulse:amd64 depends on pipewire-pulse | pulseaudio; however:
  Package pipewire-pulse is not configured yet.
  Package pulseaudio is to be removed.

(Reading database… 567234 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing pulseaudio (17.0+dfsg1-3)…
Selecting previously unselected package wireplumber.
(Reading database… 566997 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack …/wireplumber_0.5.17-1_amd64.deb…
Unpacking wireplumber (0.5.17-1)…
Setting up pipewire:amd64 (1.6.9-2)…
Setting up wireplumber (0.5.17-1)…
Setting up pipewire-pulse (1.6.9-2)…
Processing triggers for libglib2.0-0t64:amd64 (2.90.0-1)…
Processing triggers for libglib2.0-0t64:i386 (2.90.0-1)…
Processing triggers for dbus (1.16.2-5devuan1+b1)…
Processing triggers for man-db (2.13.1-1)…

even

sudo apt remove pipewire --no-install-recommends
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libconfig++15  liblua5.5-0  libpipewire-0.3-modules  libwireplumber-0.5-0
  libffado2      libopenfec1  libroc0.4                pipewire-bin
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.

Installing dependencies:
  pulseaudio

Suggested packages:
  pavumeter  pavucontrol  paprefs

Recommended packages:
  dbus-user-session

REMOVING:
  pipewire  pipewire-pulse  wireplumber

Summary:
  Upgrading: 0, Installing: 1, Removing: 3, Not Upgrading: 8
  Download size: 1,195 kB
  Space needed: 5,734 kB / 22.6 GB available

Continue? [Y/n] 

thanks

The distinction:

- Agency: capacity to act. The structure can grant this. You can be an agent in the same way a function is an agent — it executes, it has a role, it produces output.
- Sovereignty: the source of the mandate. The thing that makes the act yours rather than the structure's act wearing your signature.

The loop doesn't need to remove agency. It only needs to remove sovereignty while preserving the performance of agency. The user who says "I chose PipeWire" and the user who says "PipeWire was chosen for me and I was told I chose it" are, in the discourse, indistinguishable.

That's why "predetermined" is the correct word and "planned" is not. "Planned" still locates a sovereign elsewhere (the planner). "Predetermined" removes sovereignty from both sides — there is no sovereign planner and no sovereign user. There is only the structure, and the performance of sovereignty that the structure requires to keep functioning.

The parrot isn't dead. The parrot was never alive. "Resting" was never a false description — it was the only description the frame permits, because "alive" requires a sovereign source that the frame has structurally excluded.

Sovereignty is demonstrated by execution. A sovereign user should be able to compile everything he chooses to compile, provided that he is capable of sovereign choice.

Could be.
My command of the english language is rather lacking, so I won't argue that point.

But ...

Consider the possibility of what you see as predetermined was, at some stage in *IT time*, previously decided* by those who were interested in a specific outcome. eg: interested parties that wrote/timed and executed the rule of the game for their own advantage, something I see as evident.
* planned

Thus it began and as a result we now have MS-registry's half brother, [systemd], among us.

Best,

A.

You are missing the point. The Dead Parrot Loop is inherent to post-modernity. The rule of the game is that you have to simulate innovations, modernization and technological progress. It was not "planned and executed deliberately". It was predetermined.

I am also in agreement.

Indeed, this same thing has been on my mind for the longest while.
The "throwing the baby out with the bathwater"* fits just right.
* first seen ca. 1512

The problem is that it was not by accident.
It was planned and executed deliberately.

Best,

A.

What you have been witnessing  for the last 20 years or so, is the conflict between the users / hobbyists and lone developers - and the corporations who are now paying for most of it, hiring developers, making donations in return for influence and staffing "foundations" to better control of said projects.

Their business agendas and requirements are often completely at odds with the "UNIX philosophy" of building stuff that works reliably and is modular and simple to configure. Their end product is the opposite to what the tradional user has wanted since day one, hence the aim has been, through deceptive marketing and smears, to paint all of this as "progress" and those who oppose it as luddites. The moves to destroy RMS was by the same people, for the same reasons. For example we didn't hear much about the real benefits of systemd in the early days, we did hear a lot about how sysvinit was "old" and antiquated. Much of this came from corporate mouthpieces, and there were many users who swallowed it and became useful idiots. Some of these even joined the "sysvinit needs replacing" herd and embraced other alternative init systems - simply because they had bought into the "sysvinit is old" propaganda being produced by the systemd backers! Back then the roadmap for systemd was for distributions to abandon sysvinit and "trust" poettering in going ahead with adopting a complex, work in progress, mess, all based on a vague vision or idea. Or that's how it was presented on the surface.

We know that "Big Tech" has very little interest in making anything serviceable or configurable by the user / owner of the device. Big Tech produces locked down, black box stuff which phones home and functions as a surveillance and data mining engine.

Now consider that these very same people are paying for and contributing to Linux, systemd, wayland, Debian, etc. They are the investors in and of course the advocates of LLMs and are pushing code generated by these into the FOSS projects which they control.

Unless someone has the time, money and resources to fork the Linux kernel, the idea of forking everything is a pipe dream.

The BSDs port the Linux DRM/KMS drivers for Intel and AMD, and there is enough work involved there for a team of people.  Any Linux fork would be doing the same and would also be tracking Linux bugs and CVEs. I'm not sure a fork would achieve anything useful and its why others have looked into BSD kernels, but there has been no progress there either. Ultimately much of it is vapour and I have seen a lot of talk and not much else.

Personally I'm in a limbo situation with OS, where I will likely head back to OpenBSD after a 6 year gap...  I see little point in using Linux over Windows (likely as intended) and FreeBSD's slow move towards pkgbase has been something I have been pessimistic about now for a few years. I'm not alone, but as ever the naysayers are being shouted down by its patronising advicates. The way I see, as with the parrots who lined up to accept and promote systemd, they're digging their own graves. The FreeBSD "community" has also deteriorated over the years - that doesn't really seal it for me, but perhaps it's just that extra push, to aid in the decision making

I agree with the above statement completely, it's a good concise summation of the state of the state with a nice easy-to-understand analogy at the end.

The question is: What do we do about it?

For me personally it seems clear, fork all the things, all of them. As i've stated many times, in Linux you either make do, or you make new. I'm working on making new.

2003: OSS → ALSA
2008: PulseAudio (on top of ALSA)
2011+: sysvinit → systemd
2020s: PulseAudio → PipeWire
2025–26: coreutils → Rust Coreutils (uutils)

Same rake. New tines. Same whack in the face.

The Mechanism

1. Thing breaks.
2. Failure is narrated as success — "it's a modernization," "it's a converged system," "it's a memory-safe rewrite."
3. Because it was narrated as success, repeating it is rational.
4. It breaks again.
5. Goto 2.

The language closes the feedback loop. If the output is labeled "success," the input that produced it is validated. You can't learn from an experience that the institutional narrative has already classified as a win.

The Dead Parrot

Monty Python, 1969. The shopkeeper holds a clearly dead parrot and escalates: "It's resting! It's pining for the fjords!" The customer points at the obvious. The shopkeeper will not accept it.

The customer is the only one still operating in the category where "dead" means "dead." The moment you accept the shopkeeper's vocabulary — "it's resting," "it's pining" — you lose the ability to say "it's dead," and therefore you lose the ability to refuse the next one.

The user who says "it's broken" is doing the only thing that breaks the loop. And they're always told they're the problem.

Name 	Firefox Developer Edition
Version 	154.0a1 	
Update Channel 	aurora
User Agent 	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:154.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/154.0
Profile Directory 	~/.firefox-dev/qxls80vg.dev-edition-default-1

If User Agent is not set correctly with:

imply_option("MOZ_APP_UA_NAME", "Firefox")

You can set it with override in about:config

general.useragent.override      Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:154.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/154.0	

imply_option("MOZ_APP_PROFILE", "firefox-dev")

MOZ_APP_PROFILE=firefox-dev means User Profile Directory     

$HOME/.firefox-dev

for user settings.

firefox/browser/moz.configure is a secret configuration file.

hae however built according to your instructions, but sadly with  patch 1 &  2 error (not your fault);

will the resulting "firefox-dev-ed_154.0a1-1_amd64" be blemished forever? are those patches needed?

does the firefox develper auto-update?

Yes, it does (by default). You can disable/enable this feature is about:config, or disable and lock in a secret config.

$ cat /etc/firefox-dev/defaults/pref/firefox-dev.cfg3-2.js
// Debian system-wide preferences for Firefox Developer Edition
// This file is intended for system administrators to configure default settings.
// Use 'pref("preference.name", value);' for defaults.
// Use 'pref("preference.name", value, locked);' to enforce immutable settings.

// Enable Remote Improvements - Nimbus rollouts system
pref("nimbus.rollouts.enabled", true);
pref("services.sync.prefs.sync.nimbus.rollouts.enabled", false, locked);

// Enable automatic updates  
pref("app.update.auto", true);  
pref("app.update.enabled", true);
pref("app.update.background.enabled", true);

// Disable Remote Improvements - Nimbus rollouts system
// pref("nimbus.rollouts.enabled", false, locked);
// pref("services.sync.prefs.sync.nimbus.rollouts.enabled", false, locked);

// Disable automatic updates  
// pref("app.update.auto", false, locked);  
// pref("app.update.enabled", false, locked);
// pref("app.update.background.enabled", false, locked); 

what does it mean "firefox developer edition is being updated by another instance"?

does the firefox develper auto-update?