I was thinking not only about the finicky drivers, but also the different audio backends, like ALSA and OSS, Pulse would have just come out at the time, so it was definitely getting better, but it was fresh off the presses back then, so it wasn’t good enough yet either. Nowadays, Pulse works pretty well, pipewire works pretty well, things more or less just work, Bluetooth can be a little weird, but usually you just need to change the settings on pulse/pipewire to your preference.
I’ve genuinely had problems with multi-speaker configs this year on multiple distros and very little guidance on how to troubleshoot it. But you’re not wrong.
I was thinking not only about the finicky drivers, but also the different audio backends, like ALSA and OSS, Pulse would have just come out at the time, so it was definitely getting better, but it was fresh off the presses back then, so it wasn’t good enough yet either. Nowadays, Pulse works pretty well, pipewire works pretty well, things more or less just work, Bluetooth can be a little weird, but usually you just need to change the settings on pulse/pipewire to your preference.
I’ve genuinely had problems with multi-speaker configs this year on multiple distros and very little guidance on how to troubleshoot it. But you’re not wrong.