PipeWire Audio Backend Comes To QEMU

Adding to the list of features coming with QEMU 8.1 is now having a native PipeWire audio back-end.

Merged last week was an initial PipeWire audio back-endo for QEMU to interface directly with PipeWire rather than having to go through OSS, JACK, SDL, or PulseAudio for audio handling when using this processor emulator on Linux systems.

The thousand lines of new code making up this PipeWire back-end were worked on by Red Hat engineers. The new back-end can be specified with the "-audiodev pipewire" option.

QEMU has come a long way over the years...

Baking for QEMU 8.1 is also LoongArch improvements, emulation for various new Arm boards, many RISC-V additions, and more via the QEMU Wiki.

QEMU 8.1 plans are to have the feature freeze in mid July, begin the release candidates by the end of July, and continue with weekly release candidates until QEMU 8.1 stable is ready sometime in August.