[HN Gopher] Pipewire to replace Pulseaudion on Ubuntu 22.10
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Pipewire to replace Pulseaudion on Ubuntu 22.10
Author : marcodiego
Score : 123 points
Date : 2022-05-21 13:56 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (discourse.ubuntu.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (discourse.ubuntu.com)
| kabes wrote:
| Hard to overstate what a blessing Wim Taymans has been for
| dealing with AV in linux. Both gstreamer and pipewire have really
| moved the bar. Qualitative engineered and a joy to work with.
| nickserv wrote:
| Great news! Had some problems with my Jabra USB sound card for
| wireless headphones until I switched over to pipewire. Also
| helped latency issues in OBS studio with my USB mic.
| branon wrote:
| Nice, I think this is great. Say what you will about Canonical
| but they've got the market share and the cajones to switch up
| defaults like this (Wayland, PipeWire) which will ultimately help
| drive forward innovation and adoption.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Red Hat/Fedora were the ones to develop and push both Wayland
| and Pipewire, and Fedora was the first distro to make both
| default. Ubuntu is merely following their lead.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Interesting. Wasn't Pulseaudio from their favourite "move
| fast and break things" developer?
|
| Did they realize they needed a better solution? (though
| Pipewire also deals with video)
|
| (the point here is basically: why couldn't they fix
| pulseaudio?)
| kabes wrote:
| You mean lennart poettering. Also the guy behind systemd.
| He's a bit controversial since he goes against the Unix
| philosophy and isn't very nuanced in expressing his
| opinion, but all criticism is easy in hindsight. Pulse
| audio was a great improvement over what was available at
| the time and systemd is IMO better than any alternative it
| replaced.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| The dark patterns he used to push systemd through is
| another reason. Making unrelated things dependent on it.
|
| Personally I think the Linux world follows redhat way too
| closely. Especially since it's really IBM now.
|
| But I'm more open to pipewire because of this. Having
| nice people behind it is important too IMO.
| toyg wrote:
| It's not that they follow, it's that RH does the heavy
| lifting nobody else wants to do (since RH devs are paid).
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Blame the other vendors for not doing as much as Red
| Hat...
| coryrc wrote:
| Pulse audio was not an improvement in my experience.
| Uninstalling it improved my system every time. I don't
| use Bluetooth though.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Bookmarked for my edification.
| dralley wrote:
| Pipewire solves a bunch of problems at once
|
| * low latency / pro audio
|
| * secure video streaming and desktop capture under Wayland
|
| * unification of Jack and PulseAudio ecosystems (Pipewire
| implements both APIs)
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > Really? Wasn't Pulseaudio from their favourite "move fast
| and break things" developer?
|
| Probably.
|
| But the Pipewire developer is at Red Hat, and Fedora has it
| as default.
| krzyk wrote:
| Lennart Poettering is also at RedHat.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Gotcha. I assume Poettering probably working mostly on
| systemd no? That's what I associate him with anyway.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Pipewire started as "Pulseaudio, but for video"; later
| audio features were also added. It still uses the
| Pulseaudio and JACK APIs and should be a "drop-in"
| compatible replacement for both.
|
| I don't think RedHat or anyone ever said that Pulseaudio is
| perfect or covers all use cases.
| dralley wrote:
| Arch switched months ago, as well.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Ah nice. Not gonna lie, Arch isn't really on my radar. I
| just know Wayland/Pipewire (among other things) were
| developed by Red Hat employees.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I've been recommending endeavourOS to people recently.
| Arch makes a lot of people go "wow" when they see how
| nice the AUR is.
| marcthe12 wrote:
| Arch never switched since doesn't enforce the default sound
| server. You can choose any unless dependencies force use to
| use one. The official arch installer even prompts the user
| to chose between pipewire and pulse on install.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| I use ALSA with dmix plugin on ArchLinux and can not be
| happier. What's the use of a sound server for 99.99% of
| us?
| viraptor wrote:
| Bluetooth profiles. Routing specific applications to
| their own outputs.
| mlom wrote:
| alsa alone works fine for me as well... a sound server
| would make sense to me if i did a lot of audio processing
| using a bunch of different applications, but how many
| people really do that anyway as opposed to just working
| in some overengineered DAW?
| tadfisher wrote:
| Per-application volume, Bluetooth device support with
| automatic profile switching, headphone jack detection,
| and probably 5 other things I use daily but don't know
| about.
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| > which will ultimately help drive forward innovation and
| adoption
|
| Because that worked out so well for Mir and Upstart, right?
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| pawelduda wrote:
| Pipewire finally fixed previously unfixable audio delay buildup
| over bluetooth when the system was under load. I've been using it
| for over 2 years and did not experience any drawbacks.
| eliaspro wrote:
| I seem to be an exception. Although I love Pipewire for doing a
| lot of things right and finally solving a lot of issues that
| plagued Linux' multimedia stack in the past, I haven't had any
| major issues with PA for at least 10 years, while now that I
| switched to Pipewire a while ago I have occasional stuttering
| Bluetooth audio once again.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Is there a good document comparing the two?
| e12e wrote:
| Not a comparison, but an overview, and an update:
|
| https://lwn.net/Articles/847412/
|
| https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2022/03/08/pipe...
| dralley wrote:
| The FAQ is pretty good, though not a deep technical document
|
| https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/FAQ
| dougmsmith wrote:
| It's kind of sad how Gitlab requires JS to view wiki content.
| Granted, their hiring strategy is a race to the bottom so not
| surprised.
|
| The big difference is CPU usage. Any audio output seems to
| result in PulseAudio using 10%+ CPU. Poettering is a fraud
| who literally hates polar bears.
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| I'm looking for this too(random forum posts and reddit comments
| don't count), wasn't even aware there was an alternative for
| pulseaudio...
| [deleted]
| tmalsburg2 wrote:
| Doesn't support audio output to dlna devices on the network.
| Seems I will be stuck with pulsesaudio for now.
| brink wrote:
| That's fantastic! I swapped out pulseaudio for pipewire on my
| Arch installation and it immediately fixed all of my bluetooth
| issues. Everything just worked.
| alaricus wrote:
| This is really great news. Pipewire made great progress in the
| last few years. It solves a lot of problems I had with Bluetooth
| headsets in PulseAudio.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I'm using Pop!_OS 22.04, and I still have serious issues with
| bluetooth quality. At least for my setup: laptop <--> AirPods.
|
| AFAIK this version of Pop!_OS is using pipewire, so I wonder if
| there's still more work to be done?
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| There has been a war raging over at r/pop_os over the quality
| of the 22.04 release.
| Kudos wrote:
| Anecdotally, Bluetooth audio is now better for me than on my
| Windows (same hardware) and Mac devices. From poor quality to
| higher latency, Pipewire's made quality at least as good, and
| latency the best of the three OSes.
| johnday wrote:
| Seconding this. On my c.2020 high-end laptop running Win11,
| from switching on my BT headphones to hearing audio through
| them takes around 8 seconds and sometimes requires manual
| intervention. On my c.2013 laptop running Arch+PW, 3 seconds.
| alaricus wrote:
| This is also my experience. Pipewire is better than Android
| or Mac.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I think the title has a typo.
| SemanticStrengh wrote:
| It has been rushed just like the reported decision
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| It sounds like I've missed some backstory. I gather people
| have issues with Pop!_OS 22.04's audio subsystem?
|
| From my perspective, 22.04 is no better or worse than
| previous releases. I've always had Bluetooth audio issues
| with Linux. And I'm usually outputting audio to the laptop
| speakers or to HDMI, which have worked just fine.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| My comparison is with fedora (pipewire by default) and
| debian stable (pulseaudio). Bluetooth works better, e.g.
| switching between headset and better audio quality
| automatically, and you get compatibility with Jack for
| free. Also sound and video recording and sharing now has a
| nicer standard and works better with wayland.
|
| That said, it is a drop-in replacement, so pretty
| unnoticeable for most purposes. So if you notice nothing at
| all, that means success.
| dvh wrote:
| I remember when Ubuntu's boss announced moving window buttons
| to the left two weeks after ui freeze of upcoming lts. That
| was the beginning of the end of the Ubuntu's desktop for me.
| knorker wrote:
| Was it better when they released 21.10 (IIRC) with a KNOWN
| file system corrupting bug?
|
| If you knowingly corrupt data, then what else matters?
|
| (Having "we recommend that people who use ZFS don't
| upgrade" hidden in release notes doesn't negate it)
| reitanuki wrote:
| I got bitten by this. It's one of the worst things to
| leave a taste in my mouth for a while :/. They could have
| at least put out a patch release of the install CD but
| afaik it was still shipping with the broken version
| months later (which was a pity when I needed a live CD
| that was... safe to use... on my filesystem).
| oblak wrote:
| Luckily, it was possible for revert this change. I kind of
| liked Unity. Still not sure why most people hated it
| [deleted]
| squarefoot wrote:
| I hope some day I'll be able to make Pipewire work on Debian
| without messing everything else in the process: tried to install
| and set up it a few times and always failed ending up with no
| audio. Now I have an almost perfect situation with very low
| latency (4 ms or less) using Reaper with Alsa alone, no Jack
| involved. Also, by using Yabridge I solved all compatibility
| problems with Windows plugins, even those which wouldn't run
| anymore on modern Windows versions. If you ever had problems with
| LinVST, Yabridge will likely eliminate them all. My only problem
| now is the inability to play along a track I'm listening to with
| Qmmp or other player (that is, outside of Reaper) as it takes
| entire control of the audio. I would have to use either
| Pulseaudio with much much higher latency or Jack with all its
| configuration issues.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I don't know about your specific use case but my switch to
| Pipewire (on Ubuntu, to be fair) was quite easy to pull off.
| Stop+disable/uninstall PulseAudio, install Pipewire +
| Wireplumber + pipewire-pulse + whatever else you need, enable
| the necessary services by default on login and you're mostly
| done.
|
| My switch to Manjaro has only left me with one annoyance and
| that's that it doesn't remember the default sink for some
| reason. So far the 2 second clicks haven't been annoying enough
| for me to invest time into fixing that, but one day I'll
| probably find that darn broken setting...
| andrewshadura wrote:
| The Ubuntu PipeWire integration comes, in fact, from Debian.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Of course, but Ubuntu and Debian ship different versions of
| system libraries so one experience doesn't transfer to the
| other as well as you might otherwise expect.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| 4 ms is great. Do you happen to be using Intel HDA sound
| hardware or is that too much to wish for?
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(page generated 2022-05-21 23:02 UTC)