I’ve been playing with Linux on my main machine again, because Windows as a development environment annoys me and my MacBook Pro, while I love it, won’t be replacing my big machine any time soon for a number of reasons. I discovered recently that Ubuntu 22.10’s latest kernel breaks my sound card. This is my /proc/asound/cards on 5.19.0-31-generic:

 0 [Creative       ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Creative
                      HDA Creative at 0xfc604000 irq 37
 1 [NVidia         ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
                      HDA NVidia at 0xfc080000 irq 119
 2 [Generic        ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
                      HD-Audio Generic at 0xfcb00000 irq 121
 3 [Device         ]: USB-Audio - AVerMedia USB Device
                      AVerMedia AVerMedia USB Device at usb-0000:09:00.0-1, super speed
 4 [adapter        ]: USB-Audio - Antlion USB adapter
                      Antlion Audio Antlion USB adapter at usb-0000:11:00.3-3, full speed

This is it on 5.19.0-35-generic:

 1 [NVidia         ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
                      HDA NVidia at 0xfc080000 irq 119
 2 [Generic        ]: HDA-Intel - HD-Audio Generic
                      HD-Audio Generic at 0xfcb00000 irq 121
 3 [Device         ]: USB-Audio - AVerMedia USB Device
                      AVerMedia AVerMedia USB Device at usb-0000:09:00.0-1, super speed
 4 [adapter        ]: USB-Audio - Antlion USB adapter
                      Antlion Audio Antlion USB adapter at usb-0000:11:00.3-3, full speed

The Creative card I use is gone! It knows something’s there - notice how the first list starts from 0, and the second starts from 1 - but it just didn’t pick up the card at all.

Not only that, it also broke my video - the NVIDIA driver didn’t get installed, for whatever reason. That was easy enough to figure out, just install the relevant packages…

but after that was when I realised my audio was broken. So I booted into the prior kernel, but my video was broken again, as the NVIDIA packages for the old kernel were broken by the new kernel. I eventually figured it out: just remove all packages for the new kernel, then reinstall using the Additional Drivers window. I’m still left with one issue though - the front channel of my sound card resets to 70% and muted whenever I reboot, so I have to fiddle in alsamixer for a little bit before I can hear anything.

It doesn’t end there though - not limited to the latest kernel was an issue where my capture card, an AVerMedia Live Gamer HD 2, would constantly disconnect and reconnect every few seconds. This was particularly annoying when I tested Xubuntu, as it displayed a notification every time it did so. I’m on Ubuntu MATE right now though which doesn’t do that, fortunately.

Turns out this was related to USB auto-suspend. The capture card exposes itself as a USB video and audio device, and I guess its USB controller hates auto-suspend or something. Fortunately the fix for this one was easy - all I had to do was turn that off in my kernel parameters: usbcore.autosuspend=-1

And that fixes that. It seems auto-suspend is for battery saving on laptops - don’t need that on my desktop, so there’s probably no harm in turning it off. I was hoping the Linux desktop experience would be a bit smoother nowadays, but maybe 2023 isn’t The Year after all.