I see. Thanks for the explanation. It seems a long standing issue: https://github.com/Maato/volumeicon/issues/49

But the problem is that if you plug in a USB or bluetooth headset, it doesn’t automatically switch to it as the default.

How about module-switch-on-connect?

You may need gtk-murrine-engine (actual package name may differ).

For logging, PANEL_DEBUG=all (source) seems to work. Anyway, did you reboot the system after removing xfce-volumed-pulse (so only xvce-pulseaudio-plugin should be enabled) ?

You don’t need pulseaudio and pipewire at the same time because pipewire provides pulseaudio-compatible server (pipewire-pulse). Also, pipewire usually doesn’t require audio group. Did you follow the official docs or other online guide?

Although I haven’t used Arch for a long time, I guess https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel#Compilation and https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel/Arch_build_system will work.

“Pactl load-module” outputs “you have to specify a module name and arguments.”

As I said in earlier comment, please run "pactl load-module module-switch-on-connect" exactly. Note that Pactl and pactl are different commands and the former is invalid.

Is the command different for that?

As the name suggests, pactl is a command for PulseAudio. PipeWire supports application written for PulseAudio, including pactl. Try "man pipewire-pulse" to get further info.

Did you enter the command line (especially load-module) correctly?

It’s not a silly question; I thought it doesn’t matter because PipeWire supports Pulseaudio.

Can you try "pactl load-module module-switch-on-connect"?

I’d try other (lightweight) distros for that case. Since your PC is old, it may not fulfil the latest Ubuntu’s system requirements.

Yes. In a typical live USB session, all changes are written to the RAM, so they are lost on the shutdown. Some live USB supports persistent storage, but I think it’s not so common.

I see. Before the switching, you may want to try Linux on Windows using WSL2 or VirtualBox, etc. Also, Mint and other distros provide bootable image, so you can try it without installing Mint on your machine. Good luck!

Kernels are usually intalled in ‘/boot’, and we usually install new kernels via a package manager (gnome-software, pacman, dnf, etc.). What distro and package manager are you using?

New kernel may introduce regressions. See this similar issue on kernel 6.10.3, or try another version of kernel on startup if it’s possible.

Can you try true instead of True?

https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/value-types.html

Values of type boolean must either be the string true or false.

Please note that many users of FOSS are also developers or contributors. Who wants to report a bug or send a patch if the community is worse?

1. Gimp to batch edit pictures in a script (I know about ImageMagick but still)

It seems to exist: https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Basic_Batch/

Bash should be fine. On typical Bash installation I think this will work (please try to understand each command line before you actually try):

$ cp ~/.bashrc ~/.bashrc.bak
$ cp ~/.bash_history ~/.bash_history.bak
$ printf 'set +o history' >> ~/.bashrc
$ printf "sudo apt update\nsudo apt upgrade\n" > .bash_history
$ (Press Ctrl+D to logout)

For the next bash session you can refer only the two commands from the history with Up/Down/C-p/C-n.

Long ago I made such restricted shell with filtering the shell command history file then disabling command history logging. With some shell scripting, I think you can get more sophisticated version. What shell are you using? (Bash, Fish, Zsh, etc.)