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

[mppix]

Calling any desktop or window manager on Debian "default" is a bit odd, but I guess you are the one that's smashing my inference that no one would bother to run Gnome on Debian. More power to you. Have an upvote.

I'm not smashing anything. Just tired of Gnome vs. x discussions (.. and why here in this context?).
The Linux desktop was divided so many times and conquered as a result. I'd rather applaud those that try to unify (pipewire, xdg_desktop, ...)

PS. I usually enjoy your contributions (even when I don't agree). Keep it positive.

[mppix]

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.

how do you see that exactly?

[andyprough]

how do you see that exactly?

gnome-shell - 24% installed it at some point, 10% are updating it:

2022-10-01_18-55.png

[mppix]

I just switched back to Arch Linux as my primary desktop after about a year and a half of having to run Windows 10. The Windows switch was necessary because former bandmates were insistent we use Studio One instead of Reaper, and I couldn't get my KVM Windows 10 VM to run Studio One without audio glitches.

Now that I'm back I tried to see if I could integrate PipeWire with Cadence but gave up after a day because it wasn't working, and after numerous internet searches it appears PipeWire is not recommended for professional audio, which I don't understand. In any case it looks like, at least for now, PipeWire is primarily a Gnome thing, and since I will never run Windows-like desktops under Linux, and choose the far more simple and efficient XFCE, it looks like PipeWire is a long way off in the future for me.

I hope I'm wrong though, because for years PipeWire has been hyped as the universal low latency solution for all the problems that continue to hinder and complicate Linux audio.

Hope this is useful:
[0) Disclaimer: Linux is not recommended for professional audio.]
1) Pipewire can work as jack drop-in replacement or also interface with running jack server. Pipewire is in heavy development (esp. in comparison to jack). Pipewire-jack is quit mature but your mileage may vary. I run it quite successfuly for 1+ years now (Debian/Ardour).
3) Pipewire is also a drop-in replacement of pulseaudio. It is developed by a RedHat developer (he also did gstreamer) but this is completely DE agnostic.
2) Cadence may not be as useful with pipewire, see https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipew...e/-/issues/819
4) There is no free launch in engineering but pipewire seems to do a lot of things right...
5) Your DE is your thing. I just want to respectfully point out that inferring that Gnome is Windows-like or that XFCE is efficient (esp. compared to Gnome: XFCE is based on very old gnome code...) is pretty strong

[mppix]

gnome-shell - 24% installed it at some point, 10% are updating it:

2022-10-01_18-55.png

Sure but Debian (the universal OS) does a lot of things other than desktop. A lot of systems are IoT devices (incl. RaspberryPI's) and servers.
We would need to normalize by desktops. For reference:

image.png
The Linux desktop is still not huge but among the DE, Gnome is important (and it grows a lot if you count derivatives).
Also, I'd expect that this going to be adopted across Debian pretty soon if there are no major issues.

[GI_Jack]

Pulse sucks, and pipewire is awesome, and wireplumber just as good.

However, I'd be waiting for a ABI/API stable version to drop before including it in stable distros.

The entire desktop community from FreeDesktop, GNOME, KDE, and redhat, ubuntu, and everyone else with a stake should be organizing a meeting with the pipewire people, to ask them what blockers they have for a stable release, perhaps a 1.0, and a timeline for getting this done ASAP.

[nist]

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).

Pulsaudio adds a lot of latency.

[F.Ultra]

Pulsaudio adds a lot of latency.

Yes it was not designed for being used by music producers, so the default latency is quite high (designed mainly to play music and here latency is completely a non issue) to save resources, but this is only the default and can be lowered if needed (e.g for games). Then there are edge cases where it can cause more latency than what is desired, but if you follow the development of any of these projects you can see that there are such reports for pipewire as well, this is just the nature of the beast.

[franglais125]

I don't think I've seen anyone seriously using Gnome on Debian since the Gnome 2 days.
[...]

Funny how you can be so wrong.

Here you go, check by yourself the popularity according to the desktop.

https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=tasksel

Spoiler: gnome is the most popular desktop, it comes out on top with 18%, followed by XFCE at around 10%.

[SkyWarrior]

XFCE desktop on debian leaves much to be desired like update notification. You need to do a lot of manual stuff to make it as functional as gnome desktop. On the other hand I wonder if the unstopable sleep problem with the gnome desktop has ever been resolved with debian. Last time I used Gnome with debian I had to do a manual config change to disable unwanted sleeps which actually never happened on Fedora or Ubuntu.