Hey everyone! I've been playing around with Linux for about two months now, switching between Fedora and CachyOS. Despite my experience, I'm having trouble with the apt package manager—my sound hardware doesn't seem to be recognized properly, which causes a dummy output issue. I'm using an AMD setup with a Raven hardware audio and speakers. I really like Cachy for its access to the AUR and pacman, but I'm concerned about its battery performance since it's tailored more for gaming and has a lot of unnecessary pre-installed software. As a student, I'm looking for a minimal distro that runs efficiently on battery and is based on Arch but doesn't require too much hassle to use. Also, I'd love to know if trying a tiling window manager like i3 or Hyprland is worth it compared to sticking with a full desktop environment. Any suggestions would be super helpful!
3 Answers
For your sound issue, it might help if you provide the exact model of your sound card. Knowing the specifics can really assist others in troubleshooting the dummy output problem. If you prefer pacman, consider trying out EndeavourOS. It’s basically Arch with a helpful GUI installer and lets you pick your desktop environment, making it easier to set up. You could find something that fits your needs.
Oh sorry, how do I find out what my sound card is?
Have you thought about trying the Yay package manager? It’s like an improved version of pacman. After you install it, you can grab the cpupower-gui app to manage your GPU power settings. That should help with battery life!
Thank you, this seems awesome!
If you're looking for better battery performance, consider installing the power-profiles-daemon on your Arch system. You just need to run `sudo pacman -S power-profiles-daemon`, and it lets you toggle between different power modes—performance, battery, and balanced. The default settings usually work fine, but you can always tweak them later.
You can check using this command: `aplay -l`. It'll list your playback hardware devices, and then you can identify your sound card.