Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

franmm · Yesterday 20:50:15

Good afternoon,

As the topic says, I'm unable to find any installation of Devuan Excalibur with KDE Plasma DE on which sound works out of the box.

I don't have the needed knowledge to know what produces this, and I'm tired of investigating about that, so any help is welcome

Troubleshoot I've done:

-> Sound works out of the box when installing Devuan Excalibur with XFCE DE

-> Sound DON'T work installing Devuan with Plasma DE with any init, including SysVinit, OpenRC or runit.
There are installed some Pipewire, alsa and pulseaudio packages, so I don't think that don't having X package is the problem.

On Plasma, I've tried this by reading some similar new topics on this forum, that allows to sound to work. On a fresh-installed Devuan Excalibur Plasma system:

-> Create a .sh file, for example pipewire.sh
-> Write on that file the next:

#!/bin/bash
wireplumber &
pipewire &
pipewire-pulse &

-> Make that file executable
-> Run terminal on pipewire.sh location folder, then inside it, run ./pipewire

Sound should work right now. To make that works everytime session is booted: System Settings -> Autostart -> Add New, then select the .sh file you created before.

So, I like to know why something work or don't work on my system, and I am very surprised that this thing (dont having sound work out of the box) dont affect to some people, except someone here for example (https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=7776).

Help is very apreciated, as I have looked for a solution for weeks and I'm tired up. I'm using Devuan as I can't hibernate my laptop with Systemd, and I liked a lot using Devuan with XFCE, but I need to use a Qt based DE because I almost only use Qt apps, and personally I like more Plasma... please, I would like to know why this problem happens to me and where does it comes from, I like to know why things happen!

UPDATE: if I log off, sound will not work unless I run manually ./pipeware.sh on a terminal. Pleasee help

Last edited by franmm (Yesterday 21:26:12)

steve_v · Today 15:04:21

I'm unable to find any installation of Devuan Excalibur with KDE Plasma DE on which sound works out of the box.

That's because it (still! ) doesn't.

See the release notes and the relevant ~~thread~~ argument.

#!/bin/bash
wireplumber &
pipewire &
pipewire-pulse &

May or may not work, subject to the phase of the moon (service startup is order dependent and 'foo &' doesn't wait). See better solutions further down the aforementioned argument.

where does it comes from

Devuan's stubborn refusal to implement any of the multiple user-service solutions already suggested, or package even a token-effort shell script.

Last edited by steve_v (Today 15:11:58)

greenjeans · Today 15:29:27

Does KDE even need a sound server? It has kmix built-in, it should work with alsa right out of the box in the presence of no Pipewire or Pulseaudio.

steve_v · Today 16:48:32

Does KDE even need a sound server?

Not really, though plasma-pa is better integrated than kmix and IIRC the kde-standard metapackage pulls plasma-pa or kmix, with preference to the former.
ALSA not working is likely one of the usual suspects (e.g. muted master PCM or wrong default card), but OP was futzing with pipewire and close to a reasonable solution, so that's what I rolled with. (also an excuse to taunt gotard OFC, no reason to miss one of those)

Last edited by steve_v (Today 16:51:08)

greenjeans · Today 17:17:53

ALSA not working is likely one of the usual suspects (e.g. muted master PCM or wrong default card), but OP was futzing with pipewire and close to a reasonable solution, so that's what I rolled with.

Yep. That's why I held off on suggesting removing it. I have a solution for muted channels and such, shame it doesn't work on DE's with a built-in mixer, maybe one of these days i'll get smart enough to figure out how to override 'em.

franmm · Today 19:43:33

See the release notes and the relevant thread argument.

Thank you for the answer, steve_v. I would mark this as solved but I see doing what says in the release notes more like a workaround (but more robust than the .sh I wrote before) than a proper solution that needs to be addressed upstream, by devuan devs and not by the final users.

I mean, I supposed that Devuan was, like Debian or other "mainstream" distros, a distro ready to use, or at least, without inconsistencies, which is not the case... so Devuan devs think that we as final users of the distro we need to configure manually these type of things? Or I am wrong thinking about Devuan being a mainstream distro, and in reality is a distro for advance users?

Thank you all for the answers.

golinux · Today 20:03:39

@franmm - Devuan is Debian without systemd. Full stop. Perhaps you would like to provide and maintain a better solution for Devuan?

franmm · Today 20:33:48

@golinux I would happily create and mantain a better solution for Devuan, but I'm not a dev. As a final, end-user of Devuan, I was just saying that it surprises me the fact that in order to get sound working on Devuan, I need to edit two files manually (~/.profile and ~/.xsessionrc) in order to get working, for example, pipewire.

Just imagine doing that by default on Debian! I suppose that thing didn't happen before Debian defaulted to systemd, so this is an indicator that either

1) something could have been done incorrectly in Devuan, or
2) Devuan is not just "Debian without systemd. Full stop."

Perhaps you would like to provide and maintain a better solution for Devuan?

Nothing personal, really, but “passing the buck” instead of taking responsibility and trying to understand the person who points out the problem feels a bit condescending, assuming you are a devuan admin, please correct me if im wrong. English is not my first language so sorry for the errors.

steve_v · Today 20:39:35

golinux wrote:

Devuan is Debian without systemd.

Devuan is little more than a shallow Debian "respin" at this point. 99% of packages are pulled straight from Debian, even when that means they're broken or grossly misconfigured by default in a systemd-free environment. Nobody, apparently, cares at all.
Obvious low-hanging-fruit like shipping a simple shell script or running sed against a configuration file go unpicked, and users are left to figure these things out for themselves. Trivial 5-minute bugs go completely unanswered for years on end.
Even the live image, that one configuration among the multitude that should be tested and polished as the flagship and first-impression... is almost always broken on release day.

Perhaps it's time to stop calling this a "Distribution" altogether? Every other systemd-free distro appears to be making progress with systemd alternatives and ensuring packages work and OOTB configurations are functional, Devuan just reheats whatever Debian serves and buries it's proverbial head in the sand.

golinux wrote:

Perhaps you would like to provide and maintain a better solution for Devuan?

Why? The distro is going nowhere and the discussion channels are administered by arseholes who won't even walk their own passive-aggressive talk. What would be the point?

If you're going to ask a brand-new user, one who came here asking for technical help, to "provide and maintain" a solution, maybe start by showing your solution as inspiration? An example of all the packages you maintain perhaps? No?

franmm wrote:

I suppose that thing didn't happen before Debian defaulted to systemd

You suppose correctly.

franmm wrote:

Devuan is not just "Debian without systemd. Full stop."

It's Debian without systemd, with a perpetual list of bugs caused by removing systemd and a pathologically passive attitude to fixing any of them.

franmm wrote:

a bit condescending

... Is the understatement of the decade when it comes to our dear forum administrator here.

Last edited by steve_v (Today 20:55:48)

golinux · Today 20:53:21

/me yawns . . .

steve_v · Today 20:56:21

That's okay golinux, go back to sleep. You weren't doing anything useful around here anyway.

Elyon · Today 21:03:14

I just want to drop here that I really enjoy Devuan. Have tried other systemd free distros and Devuan is for me the way to go. If you guys would like to have OOB experience then I would suggest another distro like ZorinOS.

brocashelm · Today 21:36:06

Or even Slackware, where KDE Plasma support is at least miles better than any Debian-based distro with it (although I guess you could say Kubuntu is OK if you don't mind Canonicalslop). Salix in particular is pretty good if you want something very similar to Devuan or antiX.

For the record, I don't like or want any PulseAudio or PipeWire -- I understand certain use cases for them, but pure ALSA is more than enough in my case. Alternatively, Sndio (which is the standard in OpenBSD).

golinux · Today 22:00:45

That's okay golinux, go back to sleep. You weren't doing anything useful around here anyway.

Wrong yet again. I never sleep during the day because I actually have a life to live other than behaving for the machine. You are so assimilated, it is unlikely you could even grasp such a reality. The machine has turned human existence into into some sort of glassy-eyed purgatory . . .

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 Yesterday 20:50:15

Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

#2 Today 15:04:21

Re: Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

#3 Today 15:29:27

Re: Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

#4 Today 16:48:32

Re: Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

#5 Today 17:17:53

Re: Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

#6 Today 19:43:33

Re: Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

#7 Today 20:03:39

Re: Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

#8 Today 20:33:48

Re: Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

#9 Today 20:39:35

Re: Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

#10 Today 20:53:21

Re: Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

#11 Today 20:56:21

Re: Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

#12 Today 21:03:14

Re: Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

#13 Today 21:36:06

Re: Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

#14 Today 22:00:45

Re: Sound doesn't work out of the box on Devuan Excalibur with Plasma DE

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