Debian 12 Switches To PipeWire & WirePlumber By Default With The GNOME Desktop

[Charlie68]

It is not clear why the switch to pipewire is only about Gnome.
I use Tumbleweed KDE, where pipewire is the default regardless of the DE and it works great.
For users who are having problems with pipewire, it is still possible to switch to Pulse quite easily anyway.
There is no perfect software, there is a lot of different hardware out there and it can happen that certain hardware for some reason does not work well with pipewire, but the opposite also happens, however today pipewire is a great improvement for most users. , this is why all distributions are now setting it by default.
But the question remains ... why only in Gnome?

[redgreen925]

Using PipeWire with PipeWire Mdeia Session and later PipeWire with WirePlumber with Debian and KDE Plasma for many many moons and all my use-cases are perfectly implemented (audio, video, several different BlueTooth devices, automatic switching, volume memory, routing, hardware and software compatabiliy).

Thus I wonder why it's not a Debian-default but just a Gnome-default.
It this some kind of test-balloon to not damage Plasma experience in case it goes wrong with just Gnome?
From my side I can say it's ready for full deployment.

Only thing that works for me if I use the garbage PulseAudio I get a hard freeze of my machine within minutes of playing anything with audio in it. This happened from the beginning when I switched back to Linux from macOS at Christmas last year after yet another security update to their OS crippled my machine like the previous did, one damn sneaky way to force an upgrade of the OS. With the Pipewire it has worked flawlessly since the first time I installed it on both the Gnome and the KDE I later switched to after getting tired of all the breaking changes in the Gnome. KDE just works and continues to work no matter the underlying changes, I have upgraded the frameworks, plasma and qt versions on this install without problems.

[sdack]

... Thus I wonder why it's not a Debian-default but just a Gnome-default. ...

If you have not followed the development on Debian around PipeWire and WirePlumber, it has been somewhat of a mess. Countless of updates have been addressing minor issues one after another, and still new ones pop up. It has not been easy sailing for some folks and their hardware. Even the Linux kernel still sees new work-arounds to support various audio devices with vendor-specific features. The work just never ends. So have I seen how it has lost its entire configuration for no apparent reason. Sometimes did the ordering of audio devices change and messed things up. It always gets fixed in the end, but recently did it not detect some audio configurations and again it led to minor issues. For some people does it work out of the box, and it does so for me 98% of the time as well. It is the 2% where sometimes there is no any audio coming and I find myself resetting the configuration, and then it works again. But it is good that they press on. It will help to iron out the last of the minor issues around it.

[nist]

Considered that Canonical's pulseaudio is really bad (compared to alsa, and oss, and all the others).

[nist]

Long life to Debian, the only Linux distro usable by everyone. Despite others always try to pollute its packages

[F.Ultra]

Considered that Canonical's pulseaudio is really bad (compared to alsa, and oss, and all the others).

Canonical has not been involved with the development of Pulse, it started as a Red Hat project. It was and is also miles better than alsa or oss and all the others when it came, audio on Linux was a major minefield before Pulse. The problem with Pulse was that it used an advanced functionality in the alsa drivers that many alsa drivers didn't really deliver on (since there where no real users of that functionality before Pulse).

[andyprough]

If you choose to install the desktop environment task the default installed is the Gnome. You have to go out of your way to get others this is a plain simple fact of the install. Who knows how many actually run it you could look up the popularity-contest stats to see what the usage is, seems to a few options to check.

https://popcon.debian.org/

Well, popcon seems to show exactly what I originally said - the vast majority of Debian users don't install Gnome and won't be affected by this change. I'm not sure why stating a simple truth like that would cause animosity, but I guess that's par for the course in this forum.

[reba]

If you choose to install the desktop environment task the default installed is the Gnome. You have to go out of your way to get others this is a plain simple fact of the install. Who knows how many actually run it you could look up the popularity-contest stats to see what the usage is, seems to a few options to check.

https://popcon.debian.org/

I consider setting a checkbox as not going "out of my way".

It's pretty convenient for new users (I install my Debian without anything and later the packages as I don't use all the KDE programs that come along with this checkbox).

I also can't remember a different distribution being so flexible on install time to ask the user which desktop they want:


For extra fun you can install them all together and in parallel.

[redgreen925]

Well, popcon seems to show exactly what I originally said - the vast majority of Debian users don't install Gnome and won't be affected by this change. I'm not sure why stating a simple truth like that would cause animosity, but I guess that's par for the course in this forum.

Your persecution complex is showing, neither of our comments were anything out of the ordinary. In my case I point out correctly the Gnome is the DEFAULT desktop installed when you choose the install desktop task. Somehow this challenges your manhood and you feel persecuted by it, well sorry about your luck if the truth hurts you. Time for you to take your hurts feeling and sulk away about how hard done by you are. I fail to see how anyone so sensitive to even minor polite responses to a post in a forum would bother to do so, all them hurt feelings must be a pain in the behind to struggle with...

[redgreen925]

I consider setting a checkbox as not going "out of my way".

It's pretty convenient for new users (I install my Debian without anything and later the packages as I don't use all the KDE programs that come along with this checkbox).

I also can't remember a different distribution being so flexible on install time to ask the user which desktop they want:

Anything that involves extra effort to get done is going out of your way to get it done but some just like to be contrarian nit pickers, more power to ya living like that...