Did you try the audio troubleshooting from the Pop! Documentation?

https://support.system76.com/articles/audio/

Is there any kind of guide for how to configure settings not yet exposed to the gui settings? I have been spending some time in Cosmic after every update. It certainly isn’t unusable, but it is kind of a stretch to consider it ready for daily use for an end user. I have a hard time imaging people at System76 daily driving Cosmic since June without manually changing the configuration files.

Is there IBus, or similar, integration on the development road map? This is a feature that keeps me from spending more time in Cosmic so far.

Yes.

https://funkwhale.audio/

I am not sure you understand what finally means. It is saying that what has been attempted before has been successfully done now. There is no implication of “revolutionary”, but tather iteration.

Was anyone saying that?

How is the existence of Spiral Linux out of character or step with the existing Linux space. As far as I can tell, there have been a great many Linux hammers and nails to choose from to fit the various needs and fancies of people. Additionally, there may be a bunch of solutions to my need, but Spiral is the one I know about.

Yes, it is just Debian, by design, but takes a lot of the hassle out have having a functional desktop. I know the next time I do a Debian install it will be done with Spiral, because it will save me time an trouble. Additionally, for peolple new to Linux, they don’t even know that a Debian install is not a finished state or what they need to do after installing. Spiral makes Debian proper accessible and safer for new users.

Here are instructions for installing the current state of Cosmic https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZCCVRbYYRM

It is in a very pre-alpha state. The promoted demonstrations are being made by people developing Cosmic, so have a deep knowledge of how to configure it manually, or are using features that haven’t been merged into the currently distributed package.

Apparently, some people that work at System76 are daily driving Cosmic, but they must be using a different configuration than what is part of the shipped package. As is, I find it basically a demo that is functional enough to attempt using for more than 5 minutes, but giving up not long after.

SwayOS might be worth looking at. It is basically just an installation script for a pre-configured Sway setup.

Some things are pulled from GitHub, so it is probably a good idea to look into the packages it is downloading.

What I described is largely about self managing a few select packages without a package manager.

It is good to think about if you really need the newest version of an app. Do you want a newer version just because it is newer, or does the version in the official repos actually not provide features you need.

If you want the Pop! Shop, which is basically a gui for apt and flatpak, to manage your packages, you will need to add some thrid party source to your package sources. For Ubuntu based distros the most common method for adding a third-party source for software is the PPA. Read up on PPA so you understand the potential drawbacks. There are other mechanisms available, and generally described if provided by the developer.

The packages available in Pop_OS by default are what Ubuntu and Pop_OS maintain. The vast majority of available packages on Pop_OS are what Ubuntu released with LTS 22.04. They do not provide feature updates to packages, only security updates. There will be no package feature updates until Pop_OS rebases off a new version of Ubuntu. Pop_OS maintains a handful of packages themselves, like Firefox. We as users are not involved in package management for Ubuntu or Pop_OS.

If you are interested in community maintained packages for Ubuntu based distros, Pacstall might be interesting to you. I don’t think there is a way to integrate Pacstall with the Pop Shop.

There are alternative ways to install apps outside the official repos. The best options depend on the applications and your comfort level/knowledge.

I tend to get precompiled apps directly as tarballs from the developers and place a symlink into $PATH, like $HOME/.local/bin. Depending on the app I will also make a .desktop file in $HOME/.local/share/applications.

AppImages from developers can be aliased in $HOME/.bashrc and .desktop files added to $HOME/.local/share/applications. Make sure libfuse2 is installed. AppImageLauncher is a handy way of integrating AppImages.

If a developer distributes a .deb themselves, it will very likely work just fine on Pop. It seems that .deb are generated with the assumption an Ubuntu LTS or previous Debian release. If they are targeting only the newest version of Ubuntu or Debian, they tend to state it.

I don’t use alternative package managers like Homebrew and Nix, but they are an option as well.

Then there is always compiling from source, but it is rarely necessary, unless you want the bleeding edge of an apps development.