I’ve been using Debian since 2000 (potato).
I’ve occasionally had to use other distros for work (Red Hat or Ubuntu, typically), or to verify/troubleshoot bugs reports in upstream packages.
But my preference is Debian all the way, for servers or workstations.
It’s stable, and it has a great community. Also ideologically speaking, it has the Debian Social Contract and Debian Free Software Guidelines.
Ah, ok. I guess I misunderstood.
I’m afraid I don’t have any other suggestions that haven’t already been made elsewhere in the thread.
Best of luck, and I hope you get it figured out.
Shot in the dark here…
You said that blacklisting the module brought back your device, but not the sound. Is it possible that pulse is selecting the dummy as the default interface?
Before reloading alsa and restarting pulse - If you go into pavucontrol and change the input/output devices to your sound card, does the sound start working?
If that’s the case, then you should be able to edit your pulse config to force your audio device to be default, regardless of whether or not the dummy is present.
(No idea about the dummy device, sorry)
This pic made me smile.
I haven’t been to DebConf since before COVID, but I definitely recognize a few people in that pic.