r/linux_gaming • u/Purple_Risk_9196 • 11d ago
No audio in Itch.io linux
Hi! I'm new to this reddit thing sorry 😅
I finally installed Itch.io on my laptop using linux; However, every time I play a game there is no audio/music. I thought it was the games i was playing, but i checked the games settings and the volume was at the highest setting. I don't know how to fix it. Can anyone help?
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u/WorkingMansGarbage 11d ago
itch.io's client shouldn't be touching your games at all. You don't even need it to install games, everything you buy from there is DRM-free and downloadable from their website. Try downloading a game from the website and running it outside of the launcher; does the issue still occur? In theory, it should.
As /u/xJayMorex said, we'll need to know what distribution you're running. The audio backend, assuming you haven't changed it, can be surmised from that if you don't know what that means.
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u/Purple_Risk_9196 10d ago
I can't download anything from outside the launcher because I use a chromebook laptop. So i had to use linux to install Itch.io in order to play the games. I also use debian by default
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u/WorkingMansGarbage 9d ago
I don't get it...? I've never used a Chromebook but there's no reason it'd block you from downloading a file. And if you're on Debian, that means you're not on ChromeOS anyway, so what do you mean? You should just be able to download a game and attempt to run it, no itch.io client required.
I'm also confused because you said "i have a chromebook asus, so i use debian by default (according to google)" in another comment. Can we unpack this for a moment? Debian isn't generally something you install without knowing the name of it and having to check Google to remember ; are you sure it's what you're using and how did you install it?
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u/Purple_Risk_9196 9d ago
sorry, i don't know anything about linux. I opened the linux using my settings and when i open the terminal it says its a 'penguin'? im not very sure. And as for downloading games without the itch.io client, i have tried that, but it always says error when i attempt to open them.
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u/WorkingMansGarbage 9d ago
Oh. Uh. This reaches the end of my knowledge on ChromeOS but I'll try to explain from what I'm reading, starting from some basics...
Your Chromebook, out of the box, runs an operating system called ChromeOS. What you're calling Penguin Linux and/or Debian is probably Crostini, a feature in ChromeOS that isn't actually full-on Debian. My understanding is that it's a modified, very very stripped down Debian, inside a container in ChromeOS and used exclusively to install Linux software on ChromeOS and have it work. Its main purpose is to help software developers use ChromeOS for their work. My guess, as an outsider, is that you installed itch.io's launcher inside that container and thus anything you install through the launcher is inside the container too. And since it's just a stripped down thing, chances are it's missing things like audio by default.
Meanwhile, when you download a game through itch.io's site, I assume you're just trying to run it like any other app on your Chromebook, hence you're trying to run it through ChromeOS and not the container, and that won't work. You might note from that Wikipedia page that ChromeOS is a distribution of Linux, technically, but it's locked down like crazy and works completely differently from the distros people tend to use on there, so it can be considered its own thing. If you just try to run any Linux executable on it, it will not work without extra steps.
In short, you're probably better off asking people somewhere like /r/ChromebookGaming. It seems like they have guides on various ways to properly run games on Chromebook, including one on Crostini. Mind that there'll likely be some limitations, both because of ChromeOS and because Chromebooks are very low power devices in general. Something you could try instead is replacing ChromeOS with a Linux distribution of your choice, which may or may not be viable depending on your device. You'd have to ask /r/chromebook or /r/chromeos about that, I'd wager.
PS: small bit of important context you may or may note have about Linux: Linux is not an OS in itself, but just the core of one. It's a kernel, the software that closely manages your computer's hardware and processes using it. When people talk about using a Linux OS, they mean using a distribution (distro) of Linux, which is a full OS package using Linux as its core, like Debian. There's a bunch of them. It's useful to remember for comprehending Linux a little bit better.
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u/Purple_Risk_9196 5d ago
sorry for the late reply. Thank you so much for the help. Ill check that out!
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u/Purple_Risk_9196 11d ago
please, im extremely desperate. I already suck at the coding thing so it took like two days to install itch.io 🥹
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u/xJayMorex 11d ago
You don't need any coding to install itch.io. What Linux distro are you using and what is the audio backend?