#1 2024-08-28 02:14:34

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 12,657

Website

Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

@hhh raised this idea, here and following posts: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 50#p137550

Pipewire now seems to have settled in, and have some advantages over PA, eg this comparison: https://itsfoss.com/pipewire-vs-pulseaudio/

BL is supposed to have a simple interface on top of an efficient modern base, so Pipewire looks like a good candidate for including.

Any opinions?
Has anyone hit nasty problems with PW suggesting it would be better to stay with PA for another release?

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...elevator in the Brain Hotel, broken down but just as well...
( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

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hhh

Gaucho

From: High in the Custerdome

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 16,143

Website

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

No problems here. PipeWire/Wireplumber works as advertised. It's brilliant.

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Bearded_Blunder

Dodging A Bullet

From: Seat: seat0; vc7

Registered: 2015-09-29

Posts: 1,146

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

I've no reason to prefer one over the other.
As long as when I fire up something that is supposed to output sound sound comes out the speakers at an acceptable level & quality, and my standards aren't that high for what's acceptable, I really don't care.

That being said, I've not tried pipewire, since pulse ain't broke I've had no occasion to fix it, so haven't tried to on general principles.

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Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed...
If there's an obscure or silly way to break it, but you don't know what.. Just ask me

hhh

Gaucho

From: High in the Custerdome

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 16,143

Website

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

That being said, I've not tried pipewire, since pulse ain't broke I've had no occasion to fix it, so haven't tried to on general principles.

There's literally no reason to switch at this point other than it's more forward compatible and it will work the same as far as you will be able to tell.

If you use Linux for anything audio/visual beyond just viewing/listening, you'll appreciate the flexibility combined with unification of the available sound daemons (ALSA, PulseAudio, Jack, GStreamer) that PipeWire with WirePlumber provides.

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I don't care what you do at home. Would you care to explain?

or1o9

Member

Registered: 2017-11-15

Posts: 246

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

Sure, no problems here either, so sounds like a good suggestion to me.

micko01

void main()

From: Queensland, Australia

Registered: 2024-04-07

Posts: 497

Website

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

+1 here. Slackware switched over in -current soon after 15.0 (2 years ago?) and many are back porting it there. Works well and less prone to crashing it seems than pulseaudio.

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#!/bin/sh
echo '#include <stdio.h>\nvoid main() { printf("Hi, bunsenlabs\\n"); return; }' > bunsen.c
gcc bunsen.c -o bunsen
./bunsen

DeepDayze

Like sands through an hourglass...

From: In Linux Land

Registered: 2017-05-28

Posts: 1,901

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

PW working fine here and working as expected.

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altman

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2015-10-24

Posts: 619

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

Pipewire s working fine on some rare other distros that I use, so I would bet that it would be a good choice for BL.

Last edited by altman (2024-08-28 12:53:49)

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My Linux installs are as in my music; it s on Metal

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 12,657

Website

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

Sounds pretty unanimous for Pipewire!

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...elevator in the Brain Hotel, broken down but just as well...
( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop

hhh

Gaucho

From: High in the Custerdome

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 16,143

Website

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

An example of the advantage of PipeWire...

Ardour is using jackd because I set it up that way (it's the audio defacto standard on linux, low latency, bro), Pithos (a Last.FM client) is using PulseAudio, and I'm recording the Pithos stream into Ardour and resampling it from 44.1 to 48K...

It'll still sound like a 64 bit sampled stream, the source, but cool nonetheless.

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micko01

void main()

From: Queensland, Australia

Registered: 2024-04-07

Posts: 497

Website

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

Alright, I've been running pipewire on this trixie/carbon installation nearly a year now and just found my old el-cheapo BT adaptor.

I installed the bluetooth meta package and the suggests and also blueman but I could not connect my bluetooth Sony WH-CH510 headset.

Error message:

connection failed: no audio endpoints registered

Recommended depends for blueman are pulseaudio-module-bluetooth or libspa-0.2-bluetooth. Apt chose the wrong one

I found this Unix & Linux Stack Exchange post that fixed the issue. Very simple solution and if it hadn't have been early morning after a long day at work and a few beers last night I may have thought of that myself.

sudo apt install libspa-0.2-bluetooth && sudo apt purge pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

Reboot and enjoy!

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#!/bin/sh
echo '#include <stdio.h>\nvoid main() { printf("Hi, bunsenlabs\\n"); return; }' > bunsen.c
gcc bunsen.c -o bunsen
./bunsen

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 12,657

Website

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

^Thanks for finding that!

Maybe we will have to release both pipewire and pulse versions of bunsen-meta-bluetooth, depending on libspa-0.2-bluetooth or pulseaudio-module-bluetooth respectively? And perhaps declaring a Breaks on the opposite library?

(It might have been the bunsen-meta-bluetooth direct dependency on pulseaudio-module-bluetooth that forced apt's hand when choosing which recommend of blueman to install.)

EDIT
@micko01 since you have a system using bluetooth, I wonder if you could check this out?
ie:
Uninstall bunsen-meta-bluetooth and libspa-0.2-bluetooth, confirm that (of course) your bluetooth Sony WH-CH510 headset doesn't work.
Instead of bunsen-meta-bluetooth, instead install the deps separately, leaving out pulseaudio-module-bluetooth:
    bluez, blueman, bluez-cups, bluez-meshd, bluez-obexd, bluez-tools
Check whether either of libspa-0.2-bluetooth or pulseaudio-module-bluetooth has been pulled in by blueman's Recommends, and whether the headset still doesn't work.
Install libspa-0.2-bluetooth check what works, or not.
Finally purge pulseaudio-module-bluetooth if it's installed, and that everything is OK again.

Many thanks!

Last edited by johnraff (2025-04-20 05:27:02)

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...elevator in the Brain Hotel, broken down but just as well...
( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop

micko01

void main()

From: Queensland, Australia

Registered: 2024-04-07

Posts: 497

Website

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

^there might be a problem with your request to check..

First, the system I refer to above started out as an xfce system from the net install and has only fairly recently been morphed into a frankenstein carbon system.

Second, on my new to me laptop I did start it out as a Boron install and updated to trixie/Carbon. When I realised we are going to use pipewire in Carbon I promptly installed it and the libspa-0.2-bluetooth package and removed the pulseaudio-module-bluetooth which also removed bunsen-meta-bluetooth. However, since this started out as bunsenlabs it may work in that scenario.

I should get some time Tuesday to see what happens.

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#!/bin/sh
echo '#include <stdio.h>\nvoid main() { printf("Hi, bunsenlabs\\n"); return; }' > bunsen.c
gcc bunsen.c -o bunsen
./bunsen

johnraff

nullglob

From: Nagoya, Japan

Registered: 2015-09-09

Posts: 12,657

Website

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

^No problem if you can't.

I was just wondering what would happen if we dropped both audio dependencies from bunsen-meta-bluetooth, leaving it to apt to choose which of libspa-0.2-bluetooth package and pulseaudio-module-bluetooth to install from blueman's recommends, on a system set up to use pipewire.

But anyway I think we should firmly enforce libspa-0.2-bluetooth as a dependency of the hypothetical bunsen-meta-bluetooth-pipewire along with a Breaks on pulseaudio-module-bluetooth to make sure that gets removed. It's a pity the two can't co-exist, but the wiki says to purge pulseaudio-module-bluetooth if using pipewire so I suppose there's a reason...

---

...elevator in the Brain Hotel, broken down but just as well...
( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )

Introduction to the Bunsenlabs Boron Desktop

hhh

Gaucho

From: High in the Custerdome

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 16,143

Website

Re: Replace Pulseaudio with Pipewire in Carbon?

Just a mention that both pipewire and bluez packages and related packages had upgrades today for me on trixie.

-edit- Here is the list from my carbon installation...

  alsa-ucm-conf     libatopology2t64         liburcu8t64           pipewire-bin
  alsa-utils        libpam-wtmpdb            libwtmpdb0            pipewire-pulse
  distro-info-data  libpipewire-0.3-0t64     libxnnpack0.20241108  wtmpdb
  htop              libpipewire-0.3-modules  pipewire
  libasound2-data   libspa-0.2-bluetooth     pipewire-alsa
  libasound2t64     libspa-0.2-modules       pipewire-audio

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I don't care what you do at home. Would you care to explain?