edit: I love y'all for helping me so much but I somehow broke tf out of my mint install on the flash drive. I have no idea how. it literally says "something went seriously wrong" in the BIOS and then shuts the PC off when I try to launch the mint OS. gonna do a clean install... again...
oh boy
ok so I'm running a mint cinnamon edge install on my laptop, booted off a flash drive for now. currently, my biggest issue is the mic. Presently, whenever I try to use my mic, it instead takes whatever audio output my system is currently producing (be that music from YouTube or system sounds) and thinks that that is the input. it does not however, pick up anything with my voice. this happens both with my built in laptop speaker and when I connect my Bluetooth headphones and try to use the mic on those.
I've fiddled with pavucontrol settings for a while and wasn't able to fix it. it seems like it's not detecting my built in mic, saying it's unplugged or something, but that doesn't explain why I have the same issue with my headphones.
I'm thinking it has something to do with the fact that it's a live session from a flash drive instead of a full install on my PC, but I'm hesitant to do a full install without finding fixes for issues I might run into first.
if you can figure something out, that'd be incredible and I would thank you sincerely and owe you one; if not that's fine, I really don't know what I'm gonna do other than take the plunge and full install, hoping that'll fix it