I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back: Post 2 – The Audio Stack Is a Crime Scene

You Can’t Hear Anything—and It’s Not Your Fault You plug in headphones. Nothing. You unplug them again. Still nothing. The speakers are muted. The system says they aren’t. You check volumes. You restart Pulse. You restart PipeWire. You restart your whole damn session. And still— no sound. That’s just a Tuesday on Linux audio. Sometimes the device shows up and just won’t play anything. Sometimes it…