AAC and Debian

Currently, in a default installation of Debian with the GNOME desktop, Bluetooth headphones that require the AAC codec1 cannot be used. As the Debian wiki outlines, using the AAC codec over Bluetooth, while technically supported by PipeWire, is explicitly disabled in Debian at this time. This is because the fdk-aac library needed to enable this support is currently in the non-free component of the repository, meaning that PipeWire, which is in the main component, cannot depend on it.

  1. Such as, for example, any Apple AirPods, which only support AAC AFAICT. 

Read More

Fixing My Shell

2024-01-03

For an embarassingly long time, my shell has unnecessarily tried to initialize a console font in every kind of interactive terminal.

Read More

The Unexpected Importance of the Trailing Slash

2022-04-08

For many using Unix-derived systems today, we take for granted that /some/path and /some/path/ are the same. Most shells will even add a trailing slash for you when you press the Tab key after the name of a directory or a symbolic link to one.

Read More