Hi Richard, Thank you for the question. I wanted to mention that you can find specific groups that deal with your specific question when you see this page: https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved We use live chat or forums for these analysis-based questions. I am sure you will find a good answer there. Thank you, Andy On Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 12:31 PM Richard Troy <rtroy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > Hello everyone, > > I'm new to the KDE community and have found it's both large and > welcoming! And someone pointed me here as one of the places to ask about > this problem. Here's my scenario: > > Fedora Server 38, fresh installation, NO GNOME (!!), then an installation > of KDE with a few utilities from other distributions. At this point I had > rhythmbox working just fine. > > The next morning, rhythmbox NOT running, so I don't know WHEN the problem > occurred and therefore exactly what changed, but to finish things off, I > needed to add some scanner software, didn't know much about the available > packates so I installed a number of packages for testing, including two > non-scanner-related packages: > > gimp skanlite sane gscan2pdf simple-scan kdenlive > > I also had mounted some NFS disks from the local net and needed to update > the system's authorization files, so I moved in configurations for a > number of other users and groups so that the file permissions information > is all available on this box (I run a modest server farm). It's possible > but unlikely I botched the auth-files somehow. > > OH, and if it might matter: I've had SERIOUS problems with "Wayland", I > can't even log in successfully with it - the session always crashes - yet > KDE's cog-wheel type icon there during login somehow disappeared, thus > taking the "Xorg" login option away, and so, not taking the time to do it > better, I'm now logging in to "multi-user mode" (textually,) and then > running xinit with a pointer to the KDE startup program. This works fine > but it does change the ownership of some running processes from root to my > user-id. AND, notably, I was running rhythmbox and playing music as I > worked after having done this, so I think it's unlikely it's related to > this audio problem, but I don't really know that. > > Later, when I decided to play something, I discovered that the speaker > icon on the lower right has a red slash across it and when mouse-hovered > over it says: "No output or input devices found" > > Since then I've done a LOT of homework, including swapping out the whole > operating system disk for one from one of the server systems, and thus > proved the hardware is just fine. > > Along the way I found that there was a conflicting version of piperwire, > namely: > > - package pipewire-pulseaudio-0.3.80-1.fc38.x86_64 from @System conflicts > with pulseaudio provided by pulseaudio-16.1-4.fc38.x86_64 from fedora > > So I fixed that. > > Some software packages claim there's no audio hardware, but alsactl says > there are either two or three "cards", depending on whether or not I've > got a USB based plug-and-play controller plugged in. The other two are > HDMI, and "Realtek ACL1220". There are SIX HDMI-capable monitors (all > connected via "displayport" connectors - more on that in a moment), and > while I've NEVER used them, these ASUS monitors MAY have built in speakers > - I don't know. Meanwhile the Realtek is a garden-variety built-in affair > that comes with the motherboard. > > I've tried "dnf update", installed alsa-tools, alsa-ucm-utils, > pulseaudio-utils and pulseaudio itself (which is when I found the conflict > noted above), and tried using these as best I can as a Linux audio novice > ... and everything else I can think of... > > OK, short of a fresh installation and NOT installing things I now know I > won't need, ideas? > > Now, about the HDMI stuff: The video card's manufacturer claims one can > have independent audio streams per display - but again, I don't use them. > > Thanks - oh, and if there's a better forum for this, please point me > there! > > Regards, > Richard -- Andy (anditosan)