Dear Maintainer,

Noticed after upgrading from Bookworm to Trixie, I get the following error by
executing the following:

orson@fuji:~$ systemctl status --user --failed
× app-pulseaudio@autostart.service - PulseAudio Sound System
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop; enabled-runtime;
preset: enabled)
     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sun 2025-07-27 18:53:41 CEST;
11min ago
   Duration: 16ms
 Invocation: c42cc32529c74ede97a6c7c71c94def9
       Docs: man:systemd-xdg-autostart-generator(8)
    Process: 1899 ExecCondition=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd-xdg-autostart-
condition  GNOME (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Process: 1925 ExecStart=/usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11 (code=exited,
status=1/FAILURE)
   Main PID: 1925 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
   Mem peak: 1.8M
        CPU: 19ms

This bug never happens when I freshly install Trixie from the iso. The bug only
appears after performing the official upgrade path, by following the official
release notes in the Trixie documentation...

!!! Also a very important note: I noticed that Trixie ships with PipeWire by
default, when doing a fresh install from the ISO. However, when I do the
upgrade from Bookworm --to--> Trixie, PipeWire is not installed,- only
PulseAudio is present (in the above failed service state). This will take away
the benefits and technological innovation for users, who are not completely
aware of their sound server still only being this old and now failed
PulseAudio... So my suggestion is, that it would be nice, if the upgrade
process would ask whether the user would like to replace the old outdated
pulseaudio to the more modern pipewire (interactive pop-ups are already
implemented for config files..), just as if they were installing it from the
iso. That way, people taking the official release upgrade, can also benefit
from the new technologies!!!!







Computer specs:
Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 13
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.6
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.13.0
Qt Version: 6.8.2
Kernel Version: 6.12.38+deb13-amd64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz
Memory: 16 GiB of RAM (15.6 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: Quadro K620/PCIe/SSE2
Manufacturer: FUJITSU
Product Name: ESPRIMO E510

Having the same issue!!

Devs, can you look at this before the actual release of Trixie? It would be
problematic to release it as stable with this bug.

I got an advice from a forum user of how to trace the problematic part. I’ve investigated and manually tested the PulseAudio autostart script (start-pulseaudio-x11). The problematic modules seem to be, are module-x11-xsmp and module-device-manager, both causing the service to fail with "Module initialization failed."

Out of the four modules in the start-pulseaudio-x11 script, there are two failed module attempts, when I do it manually with pactl load-module:

The first one is: module-device-manager, which should be loaded based on a check for KDE Plasma versions older than 5.17.0, but it still tries to execute the command, even on Trixie's Plasma 6, where the condition should be false.

The second one is: module-x11-xsmp

I’ve tested this multiple times, and the issue persists under both X and Wayland sessions. Please look into this before the release of Trixie, because it can't go out like this state. Let me know if you need anything else.

Orson.


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