MX 23 Going back to pulseaudio (step-by-step tutorial)

[user-green]

Hello, thank for your report.
I too experienced "no sound" problem when I installed Enlightenment or GNOME desktop into MX-23 release.
My solution is as below. It works well here.

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root@mx1:/home/demo# apt install pulseaudio
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
 16.1+dfsg1-2+b1 [1,174 kB]
Fetched 1,174 kB in 0s (2,937 kB/s)
(Reading database ... 254146 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing pipewire-setup-mx (23.05.10) ...
Removing pipewire-alsa:amd64 (0.3.65-3) ...
Selecting previously unselected package pulseaudio.
(Reading database ... 254133 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../pulseaudio_16.1+dfsg1-2+b1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking pulseaudio (16.1+dfsg1-2+b1) ...
Setting up pulseaudio (16.1+dfsg1-2+b1) ...
Created symlink /etc/systemd/user/default.target.wants/pulseaudio.service → /usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/user/sockets.target.wants/pulseaudio.socket → /usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.socket.
Processing triggers for man-db (2.11.2-2) ...
Processing triggers for dbus (1.14.8-2~deb12u1) ...
root@mx1:/home/demo#

Best regards

[Charlie Brown]

For anyone who might wonder:

It may be even just Alsa (bitperfect) : No Pipewire and no Pulseaudio. (I use it that way happily for years).

Only con(s): Firefox (if you prefer that as the browser) won't have sound without Pulse, also root account (in case you have to login as) needs Pulse ...

[user-green]

I just tried again on GNOME. As was mentioned above, rtkit is a recommended package. I think we should install rtkit, too.

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root@mx1:/home/demo# apt install pulseaudio
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  libasound2-plugins libpulsedsp pulseaudio-utils
Suggested packages:
  pavumeter pavucontrol paprefs
Recommended packages:
  rtkit
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  gnome-core pipewire-alsa pipewire-audio
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libasound2-plugins libpulsedsp pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 3 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,375 kB of archives.
After this operation, 7,217 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

Thank you.

[BitterTruth]

For anyone who might wonder:

It may be even just Alsa (bitperfect) : No Pipewire and no Pulseaudio. (I use it that way happily for years).

Only con(s): Firefox (if you prefer that as the browser) won't have sound without Pulse, also root account (in case you have to login as) needs Pulse ...

I think you have to install apulse and then Firefox will work (and other apps that need pulseaudio). Not sure if apulse will be enough for root account, you mentioned.

[MadMax]

Yes, just installing pulseaudio in one command will do the job as well. This was one of the first commands I tried with --dry-run. I just keeps most of the pipewire packages on the system, but apparently deactivates them. I preferred to remove as much of pipewire as possible to reduce the risk of conflicts later.

I also found out about the ALSA only way - did not know that this was possible before :D

[Charlie Brown]

In fact the way I do is without removing, just bypassing (and then placing "Volume Icon" on panel, as the current "identical" icon belongs to Pulseaudio and will become passive): viewtopic.php?p=617712#p617712

However 1-2 times (previous threads) users felt lazy and just removed it rather than bypassing: They were happy with same results :)

[CyberGhost]

In fact the way I do is without removing, just bypassing (and then placing "Volume Icon" on panel, as the current "identical" icon belongs to Pulseaudio and will become passive): viewtopic.php?p=617712#p617712

However 1-2 times (previous threads) users felt lazy and just removed it rather than bypassing: They were happy with same results :)

Sorry to chime in so late to this thread but I'm still having problems with choppy, clipping audio artifacts in MX 23. So, are you saying that I can bypass without having to uninstall pipewire? I looked at that other thread you linked but am I suppose to run all of those commands listed on that page and reboot after each one of them? Will that fix this issue I'm having? (I saw that is an old thread for pulse). Or do I need to just revert back to pulseaudio like MadMax suggested to? I wasn't having this problem in MX 21.3, and I was afraid I would run into audio issues since a lot of other users were having them too on MX 23. What's weird is, everything seemed to work fine in live mode testing. Now when I watch YouTube, or a movie on VLC, or play music with Strawberry, I get those choppy clipping artifacts. I had this thread bookmarked as well as well as a few others regarding audio issues on MX 23 so I'm a bit confused.

[thomasl]

For anyone who might wonder:

It may be even just Alsa (bitperfect) : No Pipewire and no Pulseaudio. (I use it that way happily for years).

Only con(s): Firefox (if you prefer that as the browser) won't have sound without Pulse, also root account (in case you have to login as) needs Pulse ...

I think you have to install apulse and then Firefox will work (and other apps that need pulseaudio). Not sure if apulse will be enough for root account, you mentioned.

I am also a great fan of Alsa only and have removed pulseaudio (in MX19) and pipewire/pulseaudio (in MX23).

Interestingly, my Pale Moon browser (that's an "old" Firefox code base) never made any problems and also LibreWolf audio (which is basically a modern Firefox) worked OOTB without the need to install anything else. But it's good to know that there's a PA layer for Alsa in case I run into trouble.

[Charlie Brown]

... are you saying that I can bypass without having to uninstall pipewire?..

Nope, just without having to uninstall Pulseaudio.

... Or do I need to just revert back to pulseaudio like MadMax suggested to?..

Since you say it was ok with MX-21 (that had no Pipewire, but just Alsa+ PA), first try that.


... Then in case it's still not ok, you can either remove PA or just bypass it that way: this command does that :

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sed 's/; autospawn = yes/autospawn = no/' < /etc/pulse/client.conf  > ~/.config/pulse/client.conf

(The others are just to explain the manual way, how to revert back also what to do in Session and Startup etc.)

[CyberGhost]

... are you saying that I can bypass without having to uninstall pipewire?..

Nope, just without having to uninstall Pulseaudio.

... Or do I need to just revert back to pulseaudio like MadMax suggested to?..

Since you say it was ok with MX-21 (that had no Pipewire, but just Alsa+ PA), first try that.


... Then in case it's still not ok, you can either remove PA or just bypass it that way: this command does that :

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sed 's/; autospawn = yes/autospawn = no/' < /etc/pulse/client.conf  > ~/.config/pulse/client.conf

(The others are just to explain the manual way, how to revert back also what to do in Session and Startup etc.)

Ok thank you! I'll try to revert back to pulse and alsa using MadMax's method first.