Hello everyone!
Currently I'm in the process to migrating from Windows to Linux. I decided on Mint which seems to be agreed on one of the best "just works" distros, and true enough, I've been loving it.
That being said, there are a few wrinkles, and I can't seem to find workarounds for it so far. Mainly about audio device management. The system default "Sound" app is pretty great, but there's a couple of things that I haven't been able to find an equivalent in Linux.
Currently I'm in the process to migrating from Windows to Linux. I decided on Mint which seems to be agreed on one of the best "just works" distros, and true enough, I've been loving it.
That being said, there are a few wrinkles, and I can't seem to find workarounds for it so far. Mainly about audio device management. The system default "Sound" app is pretty great, but there's a couple of things that I haven't been able to find an equivalent in Linux.
- The first one is a way to toggle between audio devices. Mainly outputs. I have a headphone, and a soundbar. I regularly switch between the two depending on the situation, so it's kind of troublesome to change them through the GUI every time. For windows there's an app called SoundSwitch that does exactly that. I can set a binding for CTRL+SHIFT+F11 and it toggle between the two (side note: that's a devilish shortcut for Linux that I'm still not sure what it does, nor how to disable it. But that's beside the point ATM). For Mint I found one alternative in SoundSwitcher, but it doesn't have a toggle option, I can only specifically select which output I want it, which means at least two distinct hotkeys. That would be an acceptable workaround, but I've had that program suddenly stop working or lose configuration between boots. Not ideal.
- I'm still trying to understand how Linux' "sinks" work. I get that they're sort of containers, but I haven't been able to properly manage them. The way my machine seems to have set them up is putting both headphone and soundbar in a single sink with two different ports. Every single forum post I find trying to offer a solution to that assumes that both devices are on different sinks. And the only guide I've found so far that explains how to split sinks is for Ubuntu, and doesn't seem to work on Mint. Can I split these devices on different sinks, or is that something Mint simply doesn't allow? I think this also messes up with Discord, because it only allows for me to select "Built In Audio Analog Stereo" as an output device, which means whichever sink/port is active at the moment. I cannot split Discord from desktop audio, which can be a problem sometimes.
- Is there any way to disable certain devices from showing up? The Sound app recognizes both HDMI audio and Dualsense speakers. Both have terrible audio quality and I will not be using them. Yet even disabling them in Pulse Audio control doesn't stop them from showing up in the sound app, which only further adds to the annoyance of switching default audio output through the GUI.