I have been using Fedora with the KDE Plasma desktop environment for almost three months, and overall, it’s been a wonderful experience. However, I’ve encountered some issues along the way. The most recent problem involved the Chrome browser. A couple of weeks ago, Chrome stopped functioning correctly, and I couldn’t launch it even after rebooting my computer. As a solution, I uninstalled Chrome using the command line and then installed the Flatpak version. This version worked well until yesterday, when I experienced problems with audio output while trying to watch videos on YouTube and Acorn TV.
Firefox and Chromium worked on those sites, but Chrome did not. After searching online for a solution, I found several suggestions for adjusting settings within the browser. However, I could not find a fix until I discovered that KDE Plasma has a sound control feature that allows you to turn the sound on or off specifically for the Chrome browser.
First, I had to open ‘System Settings,’ which is found on the menu bar, in my case, at the bottom of the display, underneath the red arrow. System settings can also be opened from under the Fedora button to the left of the display.
Now that you have opened the ‘System Settings’ you need to navigate to that section of the settings that addresses the control of ‘Sounds.’
Upon opening the ‘Sound’ submenu,, I saw that the Chrome browser sound was muted. Unmuting was easy: I clicked on the muted control and sound was restored,, and I was able to enjoy the videos I wanted to view.
I’m still unsure how the sound got muted in the first place, but I’m glad I found a way to resolve the issue. The KDE Plasma desktop offers more configuration control options than any other Linux system I have used. With this complexity comes great power, but also a steep learning curve. Nonetheless, I continue to be impressed by the capabilities of both Linux and Fedora KDE Plasma.