[kaladin-jasnah]

> You can't join meetings because your headphone/ mic drivers aren't working? yikes.

I really don't know where you're getting this from. This isn't 2004 and you don't have to screw with ALSA drivers to get basic audio functionality on Linux.

On both PulseAudio and Pipewire, I've never had this problem and I know many others who haven't had issues either, and I really just don't think audio input/output is a gigantic issue on Linux (other than, obviously, if you have niche hardware, but I still haven't had audio issues other than when I tried to install Linux on a Chromebook using the MrChromebox coreboot UEFI firmware). Audio drivers failing is something that people like to throw out there even though it's not very common. I've literally never had my audio drivers suddenly fail on me. The only mic issues I've had are the ones I'd have on any other system, like choosing the wrong input device and wondering why no one can hear me.

> maintaining that entire stack across updates is daunting

I've had Arch installs for long, long times. IME and in many other people's experiences, Arch doesn't really break that much (read: at all for me) through updates compared to other distros (eg. Ubuntu). It's a good example of a distro that you'd want to use on a desktop for this exact reason.

[d3nj4l]

It’s way better than it was before (though not 2004, I used Linux for a long time and even ~ 2012 BT audio was finicky), but it’s not as plug and play an experience as on windows and macOS. For example, see this issue where BT headphones drop to extremely bad audio when you want to also use the inbuilt mic: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/616973/use-high-qua...

The solution to this is basically to remove pulse and install pipe wire, which is definitely not the default on most distros and not something you can do without technical skills and the time to manage the setup.

[selfhoster11]

I've been a Linux user since before PulseAudio came onto the scene, and it's starting to get better. But, applications still have issues with new audio devices being connected or disconnected, and not detecting the change. Teams for Linux is a big offender here, but also OBS Studio.

Bluetooth headphones work too (which, with my previous experiences, I never expected to work beyond a tech demo), but they sometimes get stuck in HSF/HFP mode and have to be switched manually. But, at least there's a good GUI for it.

[Kalanos]

Thanks for sharing your experience