PipeWire Should Be One Of The Exciting Linux Desktop Technologies For 2019

[cl333r]

(...) I don't really care about flatpak much (and as long as flatpak is not a requirement for Pipewire - it's good) (...)

I also don't get it what's the big deal about flatpack for desktop users. Last I checked the app I installed with flatpack had a dismally slow startup like it was a Java app from the early days. Even if its startup time is twice slower it's still a no go for me. Unless flatpack apps start up exactly as quickly as normal apps flatpack will never be the main means of installing and running apps.

[shmerl]

I also don't get it what's the big deal about flatpack for desktop users

The main idea is some easy to use sandboxing. But I agree, if it performance is very bad, it's not a practical option.

[lucrus]

ha, some are still jerking off onto the RH logo on their laptops and feel frustrated if others do not follow

Your comment is so utterly stupid that it doesn't even deserve a reply, but I'll make an exception, just for you, because it's so much fun in this case .

I last used RH Linux back in 2003, when I switched to Debian and never left it since then. I like testing new solutions on my Debian system and make up my mind about what's good and what's not on my own. For example I use Xfce on Debian with plain Alsa and systemd, after having tried various combinations of Gnome, KDE, Mate, Xfce with PulseAudio, Jack, Alsa. I laugh at Devuan and Fedora users, for different reasons, even if they are friends of mine.

Now you can jerk off where you want, maybe onto my comment too, since I'm a woman, but please avoid letting us know, thanks.

[coder]

Since systemd is GPLv2,

From my /usr/include/systemd/

This file is part of systemd.

Copyright 2013 Lennart Poettering

systemd is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
...

That applies to libsystemd, at least. I don't know if the daemon, itself, is GPL. ...but you had me worried, for a second.

[rewik]

PipeWire is shaping-up to be a great replacement but, why the re-license to MIT/X11? The commit doesn't provide any technical reasons for the switch and the slides don't give any insight either.

My guess is that it's to make it easier for corporations creating proprietary A/V editors to use it. And it seems that in the audio world, there is significant resistance to Linux.
I love my GPL as much as the next man, but I'd also like to have MOTU devices operating under Linux and so far I've been unsucessful. Back when I was setting those things up (several years ago) the one ADC/DAC with XLR inputs and working on Linux was Scarlett 2i2. And its Phantom support was ... less than ideal, which necessitated a somewhat convoluted setup. Even then it was still just a temporary band-aid that had to eventually be replaced with a Windows system.

[coder]

If you've spent that much money, I doubt you'll be swayed but, for others, you don't need bit-perfect 192KHz/24bit audio.

You're focusing on the wrong thing. Bit-perfect is important, because not bit-perfect means it's affected by some unknown (possibly audible) amount. That's the main reason people care about bit-perfect.

You don't need to worry if someone listens to higher- (or lower-) quality audio than you think they should. Monty is mostly right, but here isn't really the best place to debate the finer details.

[Brisse]

Bit-perfect is important, because not bit-perfect means it's affected by some unknown (possibly audible) amount. That's the main reason people care about bit-perfect.

And as pointed out earlier, PulseAudio does everything in it's power to try and achieve bit perfect audio. It only resamples when there is no other option, such as when there are multiple active streams with incompatible sample rate playing at the same time. I can only imagine PipeWire will take a similar approach.

[profoundWHALE]

I'm liking the development of stuff in the last few years:

Pipewire
Wireguard
Wayland
Systemd
Bcachefs
Wine/Dx9/VK9/Proton/DXVK
AMDVLK
Snap/Flatpak
Librem 5
AV1 encoders/decoders
RISC-V Hardware
Clear Linux optimizations

I'm looking forward to the day when I can:

Install a package easily (like Linux apt) and have it integrate as if it were installed normally (like win32).
Not have to screw around with command-line settings for something as simple as mouse acceleration
Buy a phone that isn't Google, isn't Apple, and isn't 5 years old
Buy a RISC-V pi and run my media server off of it
Play windows games at 90% performance with dx-->vulkan
Install a filesystem and not have to pull out my hair dealing with massive bugs (btrfs), sub-par linux support (zol), or random corruption bugs from a complicated codebase (ext4)
Quickly configure a VPN (wireguard)
Encode/decode videos using a matroska container with AV1 video and Opus/FLAC audio.

[Brisse]

Install a package easily (like Linux apt).

Maybe try... Apt?

Not have to screw around with command-line settings for something as simple as mouse acceleration

As awesome as the command line is, you don't actually need it for this purpose. GNOME Tweaks does this for you.

Buy a phone that isn't Google, isn't Apple, and isn't 5 years old

I guess that's what Purism is trying to achieve. Personally I'm happy with my Nokia 3310. Oh wait, it's more than 5 years old... Nevermind...

Buy a RISC-V pi and run my media server off of it

That would be cool.

Play windows games at 90% performance with dx-->vulkan

This is already the case in some games.

Install a filesystem and not have to pull out my hair dealing with massive bugs (btrfs), sub-par linux support (zol), or random corruption bugs from a complicated codebase (ext4)

Maybe try ext4, but on stable and tested kernels instead of release candidates?

Quickly configure a VPN (wireguard)

Wireguard couldn't be easier, but I'm looking forward to GNOME adding it to their VPN interface.

Encode/decode videos using a matroska container with AV1 video and Opus/FLAC audio.

Yea, me too, but I'm afraid the complexity of AV1 means it will be super slow on common hardware even after optimizations. Currently it is completely unusable. Needs to be around 100x faster than current libaom implementation before I can consider using it. Is that a realistic expectation, or should I just stick to VP9?

[vsteel]

You don't actually need to bypass PA to get bit perfect. PA is smart enough to choose whatever sample rate the first detected audio stream has, so as long as nothing else is playing when you start playing music, you are getting bit perfect audio. Normally it will only choose between 44.1khz and 48khz, but this can be reconfigured to accept any sample rate if you want to play ultrasonic music for your dog, which seems to be a thing that you're into judging from the rest of your comment.

I might have to try that again, last time I tried there were issues and it didn't seem to work very well but that was a while ago.

It is about having enough headroom, I know a person can't hear the highest frequencies that you can reproduce but you can hear the constructive and destructive interference and how that effects the music along with how it effects the speakers. I know everyone loves to quote the only need to sample twice the frequency, the issue is you can't tell the shape of the wave. Another real world example is when you buy an Oscope for work you always sample at least 10x the frequency you are using. On a side note though I can't really hear the difference between 92Khz and 192Khz but I can tell the difference between those and 44.1.