Linuxmusician01 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2023 10:46 amSo things, IMHO, haven't gotten easier, you were just lucky if you ask me...
Probably! I've used Debian for over 20 years now (exclusively since Sun got swallowed up by Oracle). Generally, I'm happy that it's stable and generally works, and I don't care much that many of the packages aren't super-up-to-date (neither am I). Not that it matters, but I got a bit stuck with it a couple of years ago: prior to that I was using fvwm for desktop and then for a while I had to use a machine with Plasma on it, and I liked it enough to switch to it, but the version I had got to like was newer than the one then on Deb Stable. I tried Deb Testing (Bookworm) as it had the newer Plasma version on it, but had endless trouble with Ardour - every time anything got updated, it stopped working. I got fed up with the whole issue and have been using Ubuntu Studio ever since, but that has its own drawbacks. Enter Deb 12, so I hoped the things that were problems for me would have been sorted out, and it seems that they have been.
Right now, a plain vanilla intall of Debian from the Live CD, Plasma version, with only Ardour installed on top of it, deals with all the sound issues. Sound on Firefox is working, presumably via PA, and sound with Ardour and the Behringer box works too, even at the same time. Can't be bad.
My main concern is that this really is just luck, and something will happen that stops it working, and a "proper" setup would keep going. Part of the problem is that it's hard to know what a proper setup is. Even if pipewire is not fully up to speed yet, and not even installed in the Plasma version of Debian, it probably soon will be, and I don't want to waste a lot of time sorting something out that will be superseded in a year or two. I have enough to do with coping with the also inevitable shift from X11 to Wayland - I need to rethink all my keyboard mods for a start off.
My brother and I both installed Slackware way back when it was the only distro in town - we got a set of over 100 floppies from Manchester University! He gave up several years ago and got a Mac. I don't like the Mac desktop but I do like the idea of playing an instrument in preference to struggling with Linux (I'm not paid to do that now I've retired).
Sorry to prattle on, you don't need to know most of that. The point is, everything works and if my luck holds, all is well; if not.... ?