Fedora 34 Gets Sign-Off For Trying To Default To PipeWire For Audio Needs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora 34 Gets Sign-Off For Trying To Default To PipeWire For Audio Needs

The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has signed off on the proposal for defaulting to PipeWire with Fedora 34 due out next spring...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-34-PipeWire-Attempt

[shmerl]

How would it work for some games and other programs that are built against PulseAudio? And are common DEs supporting PipeWire now, like for example KDE?

[ALRBP]

How would it work for some games and other programs that are built against PulseAudio? And are common DEs supporting PipeWire now, like for example KDE?

I can't answer for DEs but for programs, AFAIK PireWire provides PulseAudio compatibility and thus would work flawlessly with PulseAudio-only software (maybe with a few config tweaks).

[Ropid]

How would it work for some games and other programs that are built against PulseAudio? And are common DEs supporting PipeWire now, like for example KDE?

The Pipewire package comes with a replacement daemon for the PulseAudio server. Programs that use the PulseAudio client library can connect to that daemon without noticing the change. Even DE tools like pavucontrol work like normal.

[boxie]

How would it work for some games and other programs that are built against PulseAudio? And are common DEs supporting PipeWire now, like for example KDE?

KDE Neon already ships with pipewire (but only is used for a narrow scope).
IIRC there is more work to get the config going with Jack, Pulseaudio "just works"

I wonder how it'll go with things like my SteelSeries Arctis5 headset that present "Game" and "Chat" audio sinks

[shmerl]

Even DE tools like pavucontrol work like normal.

Shouldn't DEs be rewritten though to work with it directly for less code clutter? If that's the new standard that is.

[Rob72]

The issue I have, is there are still no clear step-by-step instructions on how to test the latest pipewire on F33.

I have done some testing, and reported issues months ago, when testing pipewire was just a matter of creating some symlinks. But now there are actual package conflicts, and a simple "dnf swap" does not take care of them.

e.g.

sudo dnf swap pulseaudio pipewire-pulseaudio --allowerasing
Last metadata expiration check: 1:20:27 ago on Mon 14 Dec 2020 06:57:53 CET.
Error:
Problem: The operation would result in removing the following protected packages: gnome-shell
(try to add '--skip-broken' to skip uninstallable packages)

This issue has existed for weeks, and the upstream developers are aware of the issue but have not provided a solution.

[brent]

This is going to suck, I just know it. Switching to PipeWire with no transitional phase leaves no time to fix any of the issues you tend to only find when there's a significant rollout. It's nice that PipeWire works for a few developers and early adopters, but that doesn't tell much about the user base at large. And the issue Rob72 points out that developers just don't appear to care all that much... sigh.

Besides, wasn't PipeWire still severly lacking in some areas, like Bluetooth support?

[Mez']

I've switched to pipewire-pulse on my laptop running Manjaro. So far so good. It's nothing as huge and buggy as wayland and is backwards compatible with pulseaudio so it just works indeed. The setup is just the 2 laptop speakers, that helps.
I'll stick to pulseaudio on my desktop (Ubuntu) for now though as it is connected to an AV receiver for 5.1 (and passing video through to TV). I know from experience it is never as straightforward as laptop speakers. With trickier setups, I would advise to wait another 6 monts for pipewire to mature before taking the leap.

[pkunk]

I wonder how it'll go with things like my SteelSeries Arctis5 headset that present "Game" and "Chat" audio sinks

Acorrding to their wiki and commit history. They are ".. using the exact same pulseaudio code and config files to set up devices and mixers, ports and jack detection. There should not be any difference between PipeWire and PulseAudio on how devices are detected and controlled."