Hi, I want to switch to linux and I am currently on Debian 10, but I have a very hard time configuring hardware (sound cards). What would you guys recommend for consumer hardware support? I'm talking about on-board chipset audio as well as PCI as I have both.


Last update- Everything works fine in Fedora! Sound is clear and no popping/crackling before media starts playing. Also the new network card was immediately recognised and functions properly. Thank you all for help!

More information would help. It would help to know the make/model/chipsets of those cards. Some manufacturers provide better Linux support than others.

The command lspci (list pci devices) should provide that information.

As an aside, most hardware support is built into the kernel. I'm not a big Ubuntu fan, but, I must say, Ubuntu has some of the best hardware support.

As stated, more info is needed before we can even guess about support.

I agree Ubuntu is very good, but Fedora is also keeping up with the hardware really well. With either one you can boot to a live image and see if it supports your hardware as-is. If not then the lspci command given will provide info to track down support.

No problemo:
The built in chipset is an ALC 898 by Realtek, the PCI is an xonar essence stx.

I saw that someone worked out the config for the realtek chipset on Debian in 2018, but that info seems outdated for some reason, so I'm looking for another distro.

ubuntu is a write off for me, I will take a look into fedora and hopefully this will be easier

CMI8788 should work 'everywhere' with newer kernels - it's very mature and well documented (snd-oxygen). I've yet to encounter issues with snd-HDA and the Realtek codecs, but I suspect if you went far enough back in time you could find something that doesn't work ideally. The nVidia HDA is probably the only one I'd seriously question, because I'm not sure how that behaves without the nvidia driver loaded, but otherwise this should be pretty well supported by any linux distro you want to try, within reason. To wit, I've yet to find a distro that doesn't play nice with my CMI8788 card. Of course you may have to install alsamixer or pavucontrol to control all of the inputs/outputs and potentially unmute some/all of the device's channels, but that's nothing esoteric.

If you don't want Debian/Ubuntu (or derivatives) that's going to limit you somewhat (because a lot of popular desktop distros are Debian/Ubuntu based)- Fedora and its derivatives/relatives are an option, you might also consider PC Linux OS, Puppy, Slackware, Gentoo, Arch, etc as non-Debian/Ubuntu distros.

Debian keeps a lot of drivers in the 'Non Free' archives - but if it's very recent, there may not be a driver available yet.

robert_paulson_chan,

You may have better luck using Arch Linux or EndeavourOS (Arch-based but much easier installation).

This thread may help you:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=147242

As has been mentioned already, there's a difference between hardware support in Debian with and without the nonfree firmware/drivers - though it can be a hassle finding the latter version on the Debian website. I think Linux Mint Debian Edition is based on nonfree Debian so might be worth considering.

Otherwise Fedora is one option, OpenSuse is another that might be worth a look - see DistoWatch's page on major distributions.
Also, since it has just been recommended twice, I will recommend against Arch for anyone new to Linux and/or who wants an OS rather than a hobby. (Similarly with Slackware and Gentoo.)

In general, recommendations of "X works for me, others should use X" are unhelpful unless qualified with relevant reasons.

See if you can install Pipewire to manage your audio in Debian, it is new audio system for Linux and works a lot better then Jack.
https://pipewire.org/ if you need source, not sure if there is a .deb in the repos.

Try PCLinuxOS it is years since I had any problem.

As others have said, it's really only Nvidia that gives people grief and most distros eventually cope.

The question is whether you use the Gnome default desktop in Debian and how fond you are of it. (Personally, I'd rather eat slugs!) If you want to keep Gnome, and have something against Ubuntu, then you could try Fedora — but you do have to update twice a year. For beginners, we generally recommend Mint, but then you don't want anything based on Ubuntu. (Why?) The best bet may be Solus — at least it's worth a try.

Everything was working out of the box in Debian, the problem was properly configuring the audio. The sound was terrible and boomy as if there was no LPF nor HPF set up, or channels were just plainly mixed together. Trying to re-assign the channels in jack gave me a prompt that i'm missing 'fuser'. The official Realtek package caused havoc to the point that I have no audio devices recognised anymore. And this is just a simple and very common 5.1 integrated card, the Xonar has Impedance modes for the isolated AMP, which need specific controls. The default drivers in Debian produced sound, but there was no way of configuring anything other than volume for both devices. Even trying to set up separate channel volume wasn't applying changes.


I will never use Nvidia audio, so this is non of my concern
Both are installed, none of them were any help.


non-free packages are enabled, if that's what you mean.

I'm on KDE and I quite like it, if I will move to Fedora I will also be on KDE (if there is any point in doing so, as I have a feeling I will run into similar issues)
Nvidia drivers were the easiest to install and properly configure for me.
TBH I'm not sure what to do anymore.

>>I'm trying to do this right now, but I need MASON which seems to be missing and installing it seems way over my head:
>>https://sourceforge.net/p/mason/mail...pelsupply.com/
I think I managed to install mason but
Setting mason binary path also seems very mysterious to me

Most of this is unrelated to your original query, but:

Some/many of the 'features' you're after are probably 'fake' - as in they exist only in software, in a proprietary Windows-only driver, and won't exist for *nix. Whatever is exposed in alsamixer or pavucontrol with snd-oxygen or snd-HDA is basically 'what you get.' Your description of the audio 'sound' is mostly worthless from a troubleshooting perspective (sorry but it is) - would need a lot more detail to troubleshoot that and I'll say this right now: it may not be a linux issue (people are always so keen to insist EVERYTHING has a terminal-borne solution, but this may very well be a hardware issue, and tracing out problems with complex audio systems is always a chore).


Okay good to know.


Very non-descript and unrelated to the original question.

Honestly I think you're pulling about 6 different directions here and it's making your life more complicated than it needs to be (it also makes it impossible for anyone else to help you effectively - we can send random tutorials, suggestions, terminal commands that you may or may not understand, etc for days and you can 'do it all' and never know what was originally wrong, what is working or not working, etc).

My suggestion at this point would be:
- Get a live bootable image of some well-documented distro like Ubuntu
- Unhook the current storage media from the machine
- Boot the live image and try playing around with the audio outputs with out-of-the-box config. Then, figure out what works and what doesn't, and go through it systematically, one thing at a time, until you arrive at a working solution. Once you've done that, you will have an idea of where your problems are, and can futz with the installed system (or install a new system)

Otherwise I fear you're compounding problems by just throwing every potential solution, guide, idea, etc at 'issue' and either creating more complexity or new problems without ever getting at the original root issue.

Hey, thanks for your extensive response. I agree it seems I have a hard time articulating things because this is not the first forum I'm trying to reach with this issue.
1st- I would disagree about hardware issue since I can switch right now to a windows partition and play the same YT video and get a much crisper audio, well that was when I had the 'build-in' device on Debian. Right now I have none. I wish I had an snd-HDA under my devices, this is actually what I was trying to accomplish. Instead I had 'build-in' device. Which leads me to believe that this was some very basic default driver for a wide range of devices. The sound quality was as if channels are playing wrong frequency ranges. This usually happens due to bad EQ settings, or lack of Low or High Pass filters on audio that requires it. Again leading me to believe this was a setting issue. Settings which were unavailable to me. Side note- Windows has a flat EQ (disabled EQ).

Edit: I just remembered that in win 10 the realtek HDA Manager doesn't work so the device is just ran on the driver itself, without any software features like EQ, speaker positioning etc. So there isn't any make belief features there.



I understand, I wanted to know if there are distros which might have a better chance at having these settings either available out of the box or will be compatible with the realtek driver package for linux. I guess I am getting confused at this point if there is any difference at all since it was mentioned that the distro doesn't matter as its all down to the kernel. I am not an expect in IT but at the same time I do have some coding experience and have certain knowledge about computers and their hardware. But looking at the installation instructions of realtek driver package I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing. Is there a chance that for example redhat will install this package without any errors that I encountered in Debian? Or is it about the kernel and how it changed since this package was released? Also What is a 'fuser' that I need to configure jack with?

to be honest when I had Debian out of the box drivers all I could adjust was master volume. The channel mapping didn't work in jack, neither the individual channel volumes were able to be saved (they were promptly pulled back to the position of master volume every few seconds).

edit2:
I did some more digging and found this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/996245
The bug was never implemented and it revolves around jack mapping (which explains the wrong frequencies being played through the speakers, the sub, and satellite channels are probably mixed up). The only fix was provided by the Realtek linux drivers whihc became outdated since kernel 3.2. any advice at this point? or should I just abandon the linux ship?