Asking for a trouble, I installed CachyOS.
I installed it on the same HDD as EOS (I got a spare space just in case of adventures).
The installation was fast and smooth. I chose KDE (the same as EOS).
CachyOS seems to be really fast. It opens apps visibly faster than EOS does.
Then adventures took the stage.
Any app can unexpectedly freese to the extent it is not possible to kill it. Konsole, System Settings, Kate editor, Dolphin, task panel…
No sound at all. The Audio settings panel in System settings is empty, as well as a speaker button on the task panel.
Forum is responsive. The probable cause of the issue was finally announced by an expert: several optimised kernels, including LTS kernel, are broken. Just broken.
After that great announcement, and having no solution, I got my account suspended for 24 hours (I guess, because of I was too active).
Optimisation…
I noticed the same thing when I tried it. Didn’t consult the forums though. I just guessed that, that was the issue. My touch pad wasn’t recognized at all. That same touch pad works in any other distro.
Feels like a little too much optimization has caused for quite a bit of collateral damage and the speed improvements aren’t worth it for that.
I tried it awhile back to give Plasma a try. It worked reasonably well for me, except that using Wayland in the virtualbox VM gave me very bad video distortion. It seemed okay when I first started using it, but it got progressively worse. I increased video memory, but the video issue didn’t improve. I gave up.
I then tested Arch KDE and Manjaro Kde, same issues with Wayland, but it is fine with x11. I had not realized that Wayland was the culprit…xfce user…
Is that you? You got an hello, were asked for system information, were asked to try the lts kernel and and got the recommendation to try the distro’s default kernel.
Total normal interaction if you try to troubleshoot a problem, imho similar reaction you would receive here. No reason to cross-shitpost in another distro’s community.
I told CachyOS forum was responsive! It’s important, and it’s really good!
All kernels: default, bore, lts and native arch one does not work. No audio devices in sight.
The issue was solved by removing pipewire-pulse and installing pulseaudio.
The effect was immediate! I can see all my devices and it works on the default and on the latest bore kernels.
It’s a pity newbies are allowed to publish a very limited number of posts because they, as a rule, have a lot of questions. And they are thrown from the forum in the middle of a conversation and without a solution. It’s bad!
And one more technical point. Freezes! Everything freeze unexpectedly! Task panel, terminal, editors - everything. Why? I’ve never seen such an issue on Manjaro, EOS, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Debian, MX-Linux.
Sorry to say this, but Arch and Arch based distros aren’t really for newbies. They are users who have a bit of experience already and are willing to learn more or those who know exactly what they want from the Linux system. Consulting the wiki is basically required.
You have also said you got suspended for 24 hours. That doesn’t seem to be case on your public profile you have on their forums, unless they hide this information. The interaction seems normal and the people seem to be waiting for you to reply. I would generally advise not sh*t-talking other distros and communities for… frankly basic things. They tried to help you.
I sent all the necessary info. ALL of it. And they told me, that kernels were broken! And I solved the issue finally by changing a single file.
What can you read out of Wiki if kernels are broken?
It’s maybe time for a reality check here. You flew in like a newbie with: The thingy doesn’t work, and walk me step by step how to fix it, providing no further info about hardware, DE, logs, … at all.
People had to ask multiple times for basic info like the audio status or your hardware. Your reply to the first answer asking for more details was pretty hostile in tone - nobody even blinked an eye about that.
For some reason you decided to pick a very particular kernel, not the default kernel. The suggestion that testing the lts or default kernel to fix the problem is a valid approach for “a fundamental part of my hardware doesn’t work at all”. And now you’re saying it’s a pipewire issue, not the kernel. Which one is it, the kernel or pipewire?
If they have an automated forum policy that new accounts are post limited that is unfortunate, but not unreasonable. But why complain here, send a forum message to a mod/admin - they are probably happy to help.
When I read that topic, it looked to me as if the regression was in specific versions of the Linux kernel, not in the optimizations.
It sounds like you may have gotten unlucky in the timing when you tested CachyOS and hit an issue.
It probably wasn’t just the number of posts. Discourse uses heuristics to find spammers. It is possible your account was silenced by Discourse due to the way you posted. For example, Discourse looks at how rapidly you post as a factor. In several of your posts you pasted inxi output which Discourse may have flagged when it saw it multiple times from a user with a low trust level.
Yes. It helps fight spam but can be problematic on a support forum.
I don’t want to be a bad guy. I was really upset. The sound was absent from the very start, on the DEFAULT kernel. It doesn’t work on ANY kernel. I gave all the information I was asked to provide, but the last one, when I was stopped with my posts. I was told, the point is several kernels were broken. Are they really broken? Or was it just a guess, because I solved the issue by removing pipewire-pulse. The whole issue was unexpected. I never saw a distro, where sound was unavailable out of the box.
Anyway, the forum was responsive. People tried to help me. I appreciate it very much. Robots are guilty! But they are made from iron and electricity, so they cannot get hurt. )
I need a distro to process photos and create images and designs. It shall be fast. And it shall work, as I want it to work. There is certainly an amount of fun in taming a distro. I’m on a pause phase with my work now, so I study some Linux OSes. )
That’s a frustrating experience for sure, and I can relate.
But you didn’t communicate to them you tested the default kernel. So they had to suggest that, they assume that you’re affected by the same issue that came up in the past.
I run cachyos and pipewire right now on two machines, it works fine. So there’s probably more to it than “the kernels are all broken”.
All that aside. Cachy, Endeavour, Garuda, Arch: so much is done on the back of passionate volunteers. If there’s a general exchange of comparing distros we can all bring up our experiences. It just leaves a sour taste starting a conversation with “look how broken these people are with their thing”. Instead lets talk about it and try to fix what is broken. Enough space for everybody. We should help each other out.
OK. I still have to wait for my account reactivated on CachyOS forum and I will tell people that I use the default kernel. Here on EOS - no problems with audio. I even don’t know (and don’t bother) if it is pipewire or pulseaudio. It just works smoothly out of the box. I used Manjaro about 5 years, and also experienced no issues of this kind. I have CachyOS installed alongside EOS on this very PC. One has no issues, another has them. I don’t like to damage pipewire on CachyOS because it’s a vanilla option, so I need to find the reason of no sound. Still no clues found in the Internet.
