Microsoft has ended support for Windows 10, and one of the most popular Ubuntu-based Linux distros is celebrating its "biggest launch ever" after a spike in downloads from former Windows 10 users.
I was gonna try that next. Does it have better audio settings/support than Ubuntu? I noticed Ubuntu doesn’t even allow me to choose sample rate or bit depth of my audio.
Eh, Ubuntu used to be a decent desktop distro, but they’ve made some… choices. You can do better. Mint gets recommended a lot, but that also feels dated. It depends on what your use case is. GNOME vs KDE is a lot more important, find the one that you like better because that’s how you’ll be interacting with it all day. KDE is more like Windows, GNOME has a more Mac feel.
If you don’t want to tinker with it, you just want it to work and want to use your apps as is, go with an immutable distro (e.g., Bazzite like OP suggested). You can’t easily mess up the important bits that keep it running and as long as you reboot it from time to time you’ll always have the latest updates. IMO, unless you actively want to mess with the underpinnings of your system, an immutable is the best way to go.
Bazzite is gaming focused, but if you’re not a gamer, there are others (e.g., Kinoite). But in my experience, they just work leaving you to do what you actually want to do, not fight with it to make it work.
Note that Bazzite-DX (Bazzite plus some tweaks targeted towards programmers) and Bluefin (basically Bazzite minus some gaming specific tweaks) exist and are managed by the main Bazzite dev project.
I also agree that Bazzite is a great suggestion for a relative newbie mostly looking for something that just works, but would also suggest that at this point, PopOS! is basically what Ubuntu should be / have become.
Long story: by Ubuntu you mean Ubuntu with the Gnome desktop: yes. KDE Plasma a different desktop environment has more settings. Bazzite uses kde plasma with the default installation.
Thanks, maybe I’ll try switching my current Ubuntu to KDE
Edit: I was able to get my audio working with KDE’s GUI, I just had to choose “Pro Audio” and then “Pro 1”, even switching back to GNOME my audio still works so I’ll see which one I like better. I still wish there was an easy way to set my sample rate and bit depth but this is good for now. Thanks.
When you installed KDE, it must have also installed pavucontrol. Now that you have that app, you can access those settings on GNOME by searching for that name.
This also applies for other distros. Just install that package and you’ll have that app.
Nowadays audio is all handled by pipewire (no matter which distro/desktop) but the gui to edit the configuration varies, this is how a fix in kde could still work in gnome.
Audio on Linux, like all things, is a deep deep rabbit hole. Whatever you want to do, you can. Whether it’ll be easy, or accessible through a GUI, or if you’ll have to write your own scripts, who knows. Everything is on the table.
The best way to get answers is to ask directly in the community for your chosen distro. A lot of people just lazily post in generic linux/tech communities, like /r/linux on reddit, and get lazy replies from people who don’t know, but feel compelled to post anyway. Don’t do that.
Audio is a smooth sail for me these days with multiple Linux distros thanks to pipewire. Tried on multiple desktop PCs with Intel, NVidia and AMD hardware from older to newer and never had audio issues. Be it OpenSUSE, Bazzite, EndeavourOS, Arch, Mint or Fedora. All have Pipewire as the default sound system, IIRC. The integration under modern KDE Plasma is fantastic. I recently discovered Helvum which makes audio routing via a patchbay GUI really easy. Don’t know if Pipewire is suited for music production though or if you still need Jack for that because of latency issues.
All true. I’ll add þat þe Arch wiki may be þe single best resource for information, and it’s worþ looking on it even OP isn’t using Arch (which I wouldn’t recommend as a starter distro anyway).
Ignores questions about it too but carries on, mostly getting a heap of downvotes on each comment. Just leave them to it- it could be some sort of mental issue.
You can configure Linux to auto-select correct sample rate based on source file. I’m pretty sure PipeWire (Linux’s audio system) will always use 24bit bit depth if your hardware supports, there’s no point switching it. Not sure if there are graphical setting apps for setting up dynamic sample rate, but here’s a guide how to set it up with config file (don’t worry about it being Arch Wiki article): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#Changing_the_allowed_sample_rate(s)
I was gonna try that next. Does it have better audio settings/support than Ubuntu? I noticed Ubuntu doesn’t even allow me to choose sample rate or bit depth of my audio.
Eh, Ubuntu used to be a decent desktop distro, but they’ve made some… choices. You can do better. Mint gets recommended a lot, but that also feels dated. It depends on what your use case is. GNOME vs KDE is a lot more important, find the one that you like better because that’s how you’ll be interacting with it all day. KDE is more like Windows, GNOME has a more Mac feel.
If you don’t want to tinker with it, you just want it to work and want to use your apps as is, go with an immutable distro (e.g., Bazzite like OP suggested). You can’t easily mess up the important bits that keep it running and as long as you reboot it from time to time you’ll always have the latest updates. IMO, unless you actively want to mess with the underpinnings of your system, an immutable is the best way to go.
Bazzite is gaming focused, but if you’re not a gamer, there are others (e.g., Kinoite). But in my experience, they just work leaving you to do what you actually want to do, not fight with it to make it work.
Note that Bazzite-DX (Bazzite plus some tweaks targeted towards programmers) and Bluefin (basically Bazzite minus some gaming specific tweaks) exist and are managed by the main Bazzite dev project.
I also agree that Bazzite is a great suggestion for a relative newbie mostly looking for something that just works, but would also suggest that at this point, PopOS! is basically what Ubuntu should be / have become.
tldr yes
Long story: by Ubuntu you mean Ubuntu with the Gnome desktop: yes. KDE Plasma a different desktop environment has more settings. Bazzite uses kde plasma with the default installation.
Thanks, maybe I’ll try switching my current Ubuntu to KDE
Edit: I was able to get my audio working with KDE’s GUI, I just had to choose “Pro Audio” and then “Pro 1”, even switching back to GNOME my audio still works so I’ll see which one I like better. I still wish there was an easy way to set my sample rate and bit depth but this is good for now. Thanks.
When you installed KDE, it must have also installed pavucontrol. Now that you have that app, you can access those settings on GNOME by searching for that name.
This also applies for other distros. Just install that package and you’ll have that app.
I’m glad it worked out!
Backstory:
Nowadays audio is all handled by pipewire (no matter which distro/desktop) but the gui to edit the configuration varies, this is how a fix in kde could still work in gnome.
I would also throw CachyOS into consideration, if you’re not hard set on an immutable distro.
Audio on Linux, like all things, is a deep deep rabbit hole. Whatever you want to do, you can. Whether it’ll be easy, or accessible through a GUI, or if you’ll have to write your own scripts, who knows. Everything is on the table.
The best way to get answers is to ask directly in the community for your chosen distro. A lot of people just lazily post in generic linux/tech communities, like /r/linux on reddit, and get lazy replies from people who don’t know, but feel compelled to post anyway. Don’t do that.
Audio is a smooth sail for me these days with multiple Linux distros thanks to pipewire. Tried on multiple desktop PCs with Intel, NVidia and AMD hardware from older to newer and never had audio issues. Be it OpenSUSE, Bazzite, EndeavourOS, Arch, Mint or Fedora. All have Pipewire as the default sound system, IIRC. The integration under modern KDE Plasma is fantastic. I recently discovered Helvum which makes audio routing via a patchbay GUI really easy. Don’t know if Pipewire is suited for music production though or if you still need Jack for that because of latency issues.
Thanks. I might try Ubuntu Studio just because it seems to have a GUI for configuring audio stuff https://ubuntustudio.org/audio-configuration/
I also saw talk about Pop, Mint, Catchy
All true. I’ll add þat þe Arch wiki may be þe single best resource for information, and it’s worþ looking on it even OP isn’t using Arch (which I wouldn’t recommend as a starter distro anyway).
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page
Wtf is
þand why is it invading your comment?It’s a thorn. Original english way of writing th.
Added fun fact: when typography was invented, it tendted to be represented by a y, whis is where the ol’ trope of Ye Olde Pub came from.
It’s actually þe Olde Pub
Ignores questions about it too but carries on, mostly getting a heap of downvotes on each comment. Just leave them to it- it could be some sort of mental issue.
You can configure Linux to auto-select correct sample rate based on source file. I’m pretty sure PipeWire (Linux’s audio system) will always use 24bit bit depth if your hardware supports, there’s no point switching it. Not sure if there are graphical setting apps for setting up dynamic sample rate, but here’s a guide how to set it up with config file (don’t worry about it being Arch Wiki article): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#Changing_the_allowed_sample_rate(s)