The Story Of PipeWire & How It's Getting Ready To Handle Linux Audio + Video

[davidbepo]

on xorg every de had to write its window manager which is similar in scope/difficulty to wayland compositor
you aren't smart enough to judge design of wayland protocol

when i can run root apps and restart gnome shell, you say that, until then, shut

[mdedetrich]

Why do people use Manjaro? It's quite broken...

After using 10 distros over 20 years of Linux, Manjaro has been the most stable considering its fairly bleeding edge and tries to automate things. Archlinux is also very stable but requires a lot of ongoing maintenance (which causes issues if you for example leave a machine with Archlinux unused for a year or so).

Distro's like Debian calling themselves stable is a copout because they just don't update anything (its easy to be stable if you rarely change stuff) and other distros like Ubuntu historically managed to break things so often I am typically amazed at this point.

[stiiixy]

After using 10 distros over 20 years of Linux, Manjaro has been the most stable considering its fairly bleeding edge and tries to automate things. Archlinux is also very stable but requires a lot of ongoing maintenance (which causes issues if you for example leave a machine with Archlinux unused for a year or so).

Distro's like Debian calling themselves stable is a copout because they just don't update anything (its easy to be stable if you rarely change stuff) and other distros like Ubuntu historically managed to break things so often I am typically amazed at this point.

I jumped on the Manjaro bandwagon (from Mint, which I have no issues with) because it was fast enough to update against my Ryzen 3 3200G setup's back when they were bleeding edge, but not so fast as bleeding edge to break often. I work a lot of jobs and non are IT-related these days, and in the two years of Manjaroification I've had only two actual problems which both arose this year; a complete freakout because of a missed monthly update (naughty Manjaro....fixed with a remote login and console update), and then this Pipewire which was a non-issue. I think I was having my man-period when I read this article. I read all the time issues with every distro for every thing ever under every sun; including Winturd (it runs like shit on my recent laptop...Manjaro doesn't, and no update downloads)

I use Manjaro because it gets better, and I enjoy using it on my recent hardware and I can get back to work. It FUCKING FLY'S!

Also, Fedora does look tantilising. If only I wasn't so remote that data quota was an issue.

So anyways, Pipewire is for audio pro;s. I STILL don't get why it's being forced on us pleb's who don't have audio engineering requirements, which I daresay is 95% of us.

[timofonic]

Some pro audio features are useful for consumers, even in HTPCs.

I think unification is good, but please make it hurt less than other transitions such as PulseAudio and Wayland.

Pro video needs love in Linux, please take care of it too. Not just screencasting and cameras, but a lot more than that.

[ssokolow]

Some pro audio features are useful for consumers, even in HTPCs.

I think unification is good, but please make it hurt less than other transitions such as PulseAudio and Wayland.

Pro video needs love in Linux, please take care of it too. Not just screencasting and cameras, but a lot more than that.

PulseAudio hurt because it exercised ALSA drivers in ways not done before. Wayland hurts because it's completely rearchitecting things.

PipeWire should be fairly painless since, from your perspective, it's just running JACKd and PulseAudio in the same process and providing them preconfigured to play nice together.

[darkoverlordofdata]

The ecosystem is part of it – windows doesn’t have GarageBand software either, but there is also a problem for me with the linux kernel. We use Line6 Equipment. The drivers for this brand no longer work in linux, since about 3.? The developer stated he is tired of upgrading the drivers every time the kernel spec is changed. I know the linux message is that manufacturers should use the new driverless USB spec. But that doesn’t help when the equipment is no longer manufactured. To drive our ‘retro’ sound, we shop mostly at pawn shops for our equipment. It’s not just the money of replacing equipment – the new interfaces don’t have the same sound. Apple and Microsoft stay backwards compatible, so our equipment still works. But not on Linux anymore.

[Quackdoc]

The ecosystem is part of it – windows doesn’t have GarageBand software either, but there is also a problem for me with the linux kernel. We use Line6 Equipment. The drivers for this brand no longer work in linux, since about 3.? The developer stated he is tired of upgrading the drivers every time the kernel spec is changed. I know the linux message is that manufacturers should use the new driverless USB spec. But that doesn’t help when the equipment is no longer manufactured. To drive our ‘retro’ sound, we shop mostly at pawn shops for our equipment. It’s not just the money of replacing equipment – the new interfaces don’t have the same sound. Apple and Microsoft stay backwards compatible, so our equipment still works. But not on Linux anymore.

This is easily the biggest issue linux has is old hardware. I keep hearing people say that linux is the best for backwards compatibility for hardware, and yet I find plenty of hardware that is no longer supported and works on linux but does on windows, and not the other way around. windows 98 drivers work almost perfectly the majority of time even on windows 10. every now and then it needs a little persuasion. but I don't remember aside from a single device, anything straight up not working. such is not the case on linux, if the kernel drops support, you are stuck on that outdated kernel, and hope to god it is new enough for an LTS to sill be maintained.

this is one of the few reasons I still use windows, I wish linux had any decent solution,. even if it is something as stupid as running a second kernel via UML, and using the driver in it, and passing the device back to the host. but its pretty much pester someone who can do it, or do it yourself, both of which are nice in theory, but certainly not in practice. its not even like an unmaintained driver is all that bad if there was a way to guarantee forward compatibility. Linux is absolutely worse than windows when it comes to this, in both drivers and user space applications. no one will be around to maintain these applications and drivers forever. and there is no good solution to deal with this. there are some, that work to a degree. but it is not always great. compared to windows, which rarely has issues, (even 16bit applications can work using winevdm).

I would love it if linux had something for better hardware compatibility, I had to install windows on my laptop because the SDcard reader does not work anymore. i wish I could just use the old driver nice and easy but nope. and im not skilled enough to fix it myself.