I’ve installed Qubes OS on two different PCs, but I can’t get audio to work over either the headphone jack or HDMI on both machines, even though the installation itself went smoothly. I’ve verified that the sound drivers are properly installed and that the sound cards are correctly detected - both are standard Intel sound cards. Interestingly, I can hear crackling noises in the headphones when plugging them into the jack port.
I ran a diagnostic command based on a suggestion from GPT:
journalctl | grep -i audio
From the logs, I noticed this error: pipewire-pulse.service - PipeWire PulseAudio was skipped because of a failed condition check (conditionUser=!root).
I have installed the latest stable version of Qubes OS (R. 4.2.3) on two different Chinese mini PCs, each equipped with an Intel N100 or N95 processor. Both devices seem to require standard audio drivers.
In case it is of any help, or gives anybody thinking of installing Qubes more confidence, a “loud speaker” mute/volume control icon appeared automatically in my panel, and I see the following screen shots when I go into …
…Q > System settings > PulseAudio Volume control …
I have two recommendations, after having this problem. It takes me time to remember every time I need to listen to audio in Qubes :
Take off your headphones while you experiment, to save your eardrums.
don’t forget that in Qubes we have two sources and two outputs. Each one has a volume control and a mute button, so there are 8 controls to verify…
First look at the volume control inside your VM while you play some audio - for example, in fedora you can type pavucontrol in a terminal window. Select “Playback” tab, and verify that you can see an AudioStream with a moving bar indicating the source of audio (maybe you must select “Show: All Streams”.) As an example, here I have a Playback item for Firefox: AudioStream - it appears when I start playing some radio podcast.
When you can see the Playback, look at the “Output Devices” - still inside the VM Volume control mixer. If it is an AppVM, then you should see the “Qubes Virtual Audio Sink”, with the same moving bar signal.
If the audio is going to the Qubes Sink in the VM, then it should appear in the Dom0 volume control, in the “Playback” for your Qube.
Lastly, the signal you see in Dom0 Playback should appear in Dom0 “Output Devices”. If your real audio device is supported by the Dom0 kernel then it should be here.
To complicate things, some applications have their own internal volume controls, independent of the VM controls… so those 8 controls can be even more.
I never tried using audio in Windows VM, but I guess that Qubes provides it with an emulated or a virtual audio device, with similar controls to the linux “Output Devices” ones.
I am glad I wrote that down. I hope it can help you, or someone else.
Hey, I forgot to say “Welcome @Guacamole” !
I’m kind of new here too, as I hardly ever post, even though I have lurked around for a long time, learning clever tips from the experts.
C
