As a Windows switcher wannabe I have been focusing on the NVIDIA issue, and I did experience some, but I ran into unexpected roadblocks elsewhere: on-board Realtek sound and Ethernet. This is Fedora 41 KDE.
My motherboard is Gigabyte Z790 AORUS ELITE AX. The on-board 2.5 Gbps Ethernet auto-negotiated at first at 100 Mbps. After setting 2.5 Gbps full duplex speeds improved but not to the expected 2.5 Gbps levels and network connectivity is unreliable (disconnects, failed transfers). My second, older PC has a Realtek based add-on PCIe 2.5 Gbps card and that works fine with Fedora. I can’t figure out though what exact chip models these are but I could work around this by getting the same add-on card for my main PC.
The Realtek sound problem is worse: there are four analog audio jacks, two on the front and two on the back and one SPDIF optical digital output on the back. Fedora only sees two analog jacks: the front headphone jack and the rear line out jack, the other two jacks and the SPDIF port are not available. This a deal breaker since I need the SPDIF output for my wireless headphones. Also, in Windows the audio analog jacks can be reassigned as any other input/output and that doesn’t seem possible on Linux. Again, I could work around this by getting an external USB DAC (expensive and overkill) or HDMI splitter/breakout box for the GPU’s HDMI audio output, not ideal.
But it’s too much “working around”.
For now, I’m back in Windows, doing more research. Right now, I don’t want to buy any parts as my PC is not even three years old.
From some quick googling I gathered that “Realtek situation” is actually worse than “NVIDIA situation” as pretty much all Realtek drivers have to be reverse engineered since Realtek doesn’t contribute to Linux. Is this true? People post links to some imaginary “Realtek Linux audio drivers” on some shady download sites or non-existing Realtek URLs.
So, even if I decide to build an all-AMD PC for Linux in a year or so, I might still run into Realtek issues as most AMD motherboards have the same Realtek chipsets as Intel motherboards and, aside from external USB devices, the market for internal sound cards doesn’t seem to exist any more as majority of people use on-board audio.
Is there a solution to this Realtek issue? What do you do when you need multiple analog and digital outputs, preferably switchable in software? I looked at the USB DACs but they’re either barebones (one stereo audio jack) or targeted at streamers and content creators with features I don’t need and they’re quite expensive.
Thank you.