The officially official Devuan Forum!

pdbq

Member

Registered: 2024-07-14

Posts: 9  

KDE Plasma 6.3.6 - Sound and Discover issue.

This is a fresh install of Devuan Excalibur 6.1 with OpenRC, and KDE Plasma running over Wayland.

Sound from Firefox works, but sounds from files and system sounds don't work, sound volume can't be adjusted, and the Audio Volume widget displays "Connection to the Sound Service Lost" and retrying doesn't fix it.

In the Search section of Discover, Discover only displays items in "Application Addons" and "Plasma Addons". Connection to the Internet works on the rest of the system.

Last edited by pdbq (2026-04-11 20:29:11)

pdbq

Member

Registered: 2024-07-14

Posts: 9  

Re: KDE Plasma 6.3.6 - Sound and Discover issue.

WirePlumber, PipeWire, PulseAudio, ALSA, and OSS are all running on startup (and people say BSDs' audio systems are a mess).
jack-bridge could be used in the future, maybe by SonicDE. https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=7567

I think that systemd developers and their slaves are intentionally bloating their projects, to implicitly dissuade people from debugging and hacking them.

pdbq

Member

Registered: 2024-07-14

Posts: 9  

Re: KDE Plasma 6.3.6 - Sound and Discover issue.

I just found out that this is a recurring thread. https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=63022#p63022

This is definitely a Devuan problem, since I tested Debian with KDE Plasma and everything worked.

Here's something interesting. KDE developers don't recommend using KDE Plasma on Debian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZgaUtqz2nU&t=2800s

...you're on your own; your bug-reports will be automatically closed...

Last edited by pdbq (Yesterday 09:00:42)

franmm

Member

Registered: 2026-04-04

Posts: 13  

Re: KDE Plasma 6.3.6 - Sound and Discover issue.

@pdbq

I was seeing the forum and I just found you just have the same problem as me xD

I had this problems using Devuan Excalibur, and I think that devs should fix this!

· Sound not working OOTB (in the Excalibur Releases notes, there are instructions on how to make Pipewire (sound) work), so this behaviour (sound not working OOTB) is intentional

·After doing just what I said, sometimes (in a 2 week use, 8h per day use, just happened 2 times), when connecting a 3.5mm jack headphones, devuan don't recognize it and it still plays audio via the laptop speakers. Rebooting system (not just close and open the session) solves this. I will troubleshoot this issue when I have time, and I think this thing has something to do with the installing and configuring pipewire that are on the Excalibur release notes.

· Discover not working OOTB, as you just have noticed. (seems to be produced by cache missing, or missing packages)

· Manual intervention of /etc/apt/sources.list to comment the CD/DVD source (if this isn't done, I can't update/upgrade packages).

I moved to Devuan because I read some things about Systemd that made me a little bit upset:

· It isn't even something related to an init bash, it's something bigger.

· It is like a black box, it does great things but for understanding what's inside, you need to know a lot.

I used Debian until I encountered with the final problem that made me change to Devuan: hibernation didn't worked on my laptop. After trying with a lot of distros, I found that happened on systems sith systemd. Tried Devuan and it worked! So idk, now I see systemd more like a bad thing, sure it does great things, but also bads...

rations

Member

Registered: 2025-11-06

Posts: 67  

Re: KDE Plasma 6.3.6 - Sound and Discover issue.

when connecting a 3.5mm jack headphones, devuan don't recognize it and it still plays audio via the laptop speakers.

instead of rebooting check auto-mute in alsamixer. It should be set to enabled. To open alsamixer just type alsamixer in a terminal.

---

You will own nothing and be depressed
SOURCEFORGE jack-bridge

rbit

Member

Registered: 2018-06-12

Posts: 105  

Re: KDE Plasma 6.3.6 - Sound and Discover issue.

I wrote a script to fix plasma-discover problem.  I'll try to integrate it into the installer soon.
I used this post as a starting-point: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=41726#p41726 but had to change a few things.  These pages were helpful references: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/ap … -YAML.html and https://www.freedesktop.org/software/ap … Cache.html
Anyway, here's the script that should get plasma-discover working on devuan excalibur.  If you need it on different devuan version, it shouldn't be too difficult to adjust.  Also, you'll need write access to /var/lib/swcatalog/  so you'll probably want to run it as root.

#!/bin/bash

# create target directory
mkdir -p /var/lib/swcatalog/yaml/
cd /var/lib/swcatalog/yaml/

# download components
for suite in excalibur excalibur-updates excalibur-backports; do
  debsuite=$(echo $suite|sed -e 's/excalibur/trixie/g')
  for component in main contrib non-free non-free-firmware; do
    echo "Downloading: component: ${suite}-${component}..."
    wget -q https://appstream.debian.org/data/${debsuite}/${component}/Components-amd64.yml.gz -O devuan-${suite}-${component}_amd64.yml.gz
  done
done

echo "Patching component: excalibur-main_amd64 ..."
gunzip devuan-excalibur-main_amd64.yml.gz
lstart=$(grep -n ^Type:\ operating-system devuan-excalibur-main_amd64.yml | cut -d : -f 1)
lcount=$(tail -n +${lstart} devuan-excalibur-main_amd64.yml | grep -n ^---$ | head -n 1 | cut -d : -f 1)
lresume=$((lstart + lcount))
head -n ${lstart} devuan-excalibur-main_amd64.yml > devuan-excalibur-main_amd64.tmp
cat <<HERE >>devuan-excalibur-main_amd64.tmp
ID: org.devuan.devuan
Name:
  C: Devuan GNU/Linux
Summary:
  C: The universal operating system
Description:
  C: >-
    <p>
      Devuan is a free operating system (OS) for your computer.
      An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run.
    </p>
    <p>
      Devuan is based on the Debian project, but with a focus on init freedom.
    </p>
Developer:
  id: org.devuan
  name:
    C: The Devuan Project
Url:
  homepage: https://www.devuan.org/
Icon:
  cached:
  - name: devuan-logo.png
    width: 48
    height: 48
  - name: devuan-logo.png
    width: 64
    height: 64
  - name: devuan-logo.png
    width: 128
    height: 128
Releases:
- version: "7"
  type: development
  description:
    C: >-
      <p>The current development version of Devuan, codename freia.</p>
- version: "6"
  type: stable
  description:
    C: >-
      <p>The current stable version of Devuan, codename excalibur.</p>
- version: "5"
  type: oldstable
  description:
    C: >-
      <p>The oldstable version of Devuan, codename daedalus.</p>
- version: "4"
  type: oldoldstable
  description:
    C: >-
      <p>The oldoldstable version of Devuan, codename chimaera.</p>
---
HERE
tail -n +${lresume} devuan-excalibur-main_amd64.yml >> devuan-excalibur-main_amd64.tmp
mv devuan-excalibur-main_amd64.yml devuan-excalibur-main_amd64.yml~
mv devuan-excalibur-main_amd64.tmp devuan-excalibur-main_amd64.yml
gzip -f devuan-excalibur-main_amd64.yml

# download icons
for suite in excalibur excalibur-updates excalibur-backports; do
  debsuite=$(echo $suite|sed -e 's/excalibur/trixie/g')
  for component in main contrib non-free non-free-firmware; do
    for size in 48x48 64x64 128x128; do
      echo "Downloading ${size} icons for ${suite}-${component}..."
      mkdir -p /var/lib/swcatalog/icons/debian-${debsuite}-${component}/${size}
      cd /var/lib/swcatalog/icons/debian-${debsuite}-${component}/${size}
      wget -q https://appstream.debian.org/data/${debsuite}/${component}/icons-${size}.tar.gz
      tar xf icons-${size}.tar.gz
      mkdir -p /var/lib/swcatalog/icons/debian-${debsuite}-${component}/${size}@2
      cd /var/lib/swcatalog/icons/debian-${debsuite}-${component}/${size}@2
      wget -q https://appstream.debian.org/data/${debsuite}/${component}/icons-${size}@2.tar.gz
      tar xf icons-${size}@2.tar.gz
    done
  done
done