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

[ssokolow]

I'm not sure because your use-case is quite different from mine. I use linux on my home computer, and I can tell you that - apart from bugs in early versions - my experience with systemd is that is more stable compared to what i had before.

Arch BTW

To be honest, I haven't tried systemd on my home computer yet. I've been procrastinating the hassle of squashing all the bugs that come with an inevitable upgrade, so I'm still on a copy of Kubuntu 14.04 LTS that began as Lubuntu 14.04 LTS, which means I'm still on Upstart.

(Given that the support window ends in a couple of months, I'll probably jump to 18.04 LTS and cross my fingers. I still haven't had time to narrow down the source of the bug(s) which has/have made GIMP and Inkscape so crash-happy on my mother's laptop since she upgraded to 18.10... not to mention I'm not looking forward to having to be my own maintainer for GTK+ 3.x updates for lack of a gtk3-mushrooms PPA.)

[ssokolow]

Which place occupies GStreamer in this new paradigm?
Thanks!

No change. They serve different purposes.

When playing back a file or stream, this is how things connect together:

File/Stream --GStreamer--> Player --PulseAudio/PipeWire--> Speakers

PulseAudio and PipeWire handle hardware abstraction, mixing, and network routing for raw audio streams.

GStreamer handles encoding, decoding, and other types of conversions between audio formats. (eg. Decompressing MP3 before handing it off to PipeWire or taking audio provided by PipeWire and compressing it into Ogg Vorbis for storage.)

[Cape]

I'll agree that PulseAudio's main problems lay in exercising untested code paths in audio drivers, that PipeWire is an exciting thing, and that systemd streamlined my usage... but stability?

It wasn't until systemd that I started tripping over ways to wedge or otherwise break my init system. (eg. I managed to get systemd to stop responding to requests to start or stop things on Debian 8.6 while working to set up a VPS image and the only way to get it working again was to either do the Alt+SysRq+reisub safe reboot forcing via /proc/sysrq-trigger or use the VPS control panel to simulate power-cycling the system.)

They really should have put less in PID 1 and more in a helper process that controls PID 1 and can be safely re-spawned by PID 1 if I kill it... similar to the relationship between /usr/bin/X and my window manager when the WM starts malfunctioning after a few weeks or months of runtime. (Something I've encountered with every WM I've ever tried, from Openbox to KWin. Sometimes it's a segfault. Sometimes it's weird compositor flickering or stopping responding to input... but I've yet to find a comfortable WM which never experienced that problem.)

I'm not sure because your use-case is quite different from mine. I use linux on my home computer, and I can tell you that - apart from bugs in early versions - my experience with systemd is that is more stable compared to what i had before.

Arch BTW

[jacob]

Which place occupies GStreamer in this new paradigm?
Thanks!

I'm not an expert on this but I would say the same as now.GStreamer is a framework for codecs. It ultimately generates audio/video streams which must then be routed and delivered to the correct output devices. PipeWire will take care of this later part. But I could be wrong.

[q2dg]

Which place occupies GStreamer in this new paradigm?
Thanks!

[ssokolow]

- Systemd is a great system that streamlined the usage and stability of GNU/Linux

- PulseAudio is a good system that gave developers and DE a good standard to communicate


- PipeWire will be a great standard that will simplify development and usage of multimedia applications

Change my mind 😎🍵

I'll agree that PulseAudio's main problems lay in exercising untested code paths in audio drivers, that PipeWire is an exciting thing, and that systemd streamlined my usage... but stability?

It wasn't until systemd that I started tripping over ways to wedge or otherwise break my init system. (eg. I managed to get systemd to stop responding to requests to start or stop things on Debian 8.6 while working to set up a VPS image and the only way to get it working again was to either do the Alt+SysRq+reisub safe reboot forcing via /proc/sysrq-trigger or use the VPS control panel to simulate power-cycling the system.)

They really should have put less in PID 1 and more in a helper process that controls PID 1 and can be safely re-spawned by PID 1 if I kill it... similar to the relationship between /usr/bin/X and my window manager when the WM starts malfunctioning after a few weeks or months of runtime. (Something I've encountered with every WM I've ever tried, from Openbox to KWin. Sometimes it's a segfault. Sometimes it's weird compositor flickering or stopping responding to input... but I've yet to find a comfortable WM which never experienced that problem.)

[Cape]

- Systemd is a great system that streamlined the usage and stability of GNU/Linux

- PulseAudio is a good system that gave developers and DE a good standard to communicate


- PipeWire will be a great standard that will simplify development and usage of multimedia applications

Change my mind 😎🍵

[shmerl]

shmerl A common framework is extra work. A common compositor is shared work.

So yeah.. It will work on Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu..

Not sure what you mean, there isn't a common compositor - there are tons of compositors already. But if they can use common methods of doing things, there won't be a problem with applications working on all of them.

[Cape]

JACK?

No. It's correct

[lucrus]

Waiting for usual screams about RedHat stuffing things down users' throats... anyone?

and the most exciting part of it - you'll get NSA in your audio Pipe for free! And then they'll put it in the kernel so you can't get rid of it that easy. Every time I read RH has developed a new exciting feature for you, I flinch

I haven't had to wait too much...