Re: Switch default from PulseAudio to PipeWire (and WirePlumber) for audio
Hi!
On Wed, 14 Sep 2022 11:56:00 +0200, Dylan Aïssi wrote:
> Le mar. 13 sept. 2022 à 19:25, Michael Biebl <biebl@debian.org> a écrit
> :
>>
>> Afaics, Dylan asked mostly if we should do the switch. He didn't give
>> any personal recommendation or preference. At least that's how I read
>> his initial email.
>
> I have a basic usage of pipewire, I only listen to music and make video
> calls with friends/colleagues. That is why I am not representative and
> cannot force the switch (although I will be happy if it happens). Hence
> my suggestion to get feedback from you. (Thanks for all of your
> replies!)
>
> We still have few packages depending/recommending/suggesting only on
> pulseaudio and not on either pulseaudio or pipewire-pulse [1]. I'll
> start tracking them and will propose a fix right now. This is even more
> important because the next pipewire-pulse package will be in conflict
> with the pulseaudio package to avoid fights between both servers [2] and
> because it is an upstream recommendation [3]. Currently, this is not a
> blocker since all the main packages already dep/rec/sug either
> pulseaudio or pipewire-pulse.
This would be true if we had a single place that said "install pulseaudio
as a sound server". Unfortunately, we don't and that decision is scattered
into lots of packages that have `pulseaudio | pipewire-pulse`.
>
> The issue mentioned here regarding choppy audio in case of high CPU load
> and related rtkit errors messages, should be reduced with the next pkg
> version.
> As recommended by upstream [4], it will create a pipewire system group
> and set security limits [5]. The decision remains to users to add
> themselves in the pipewire group.
This seems a step backwards to me. Even though pulseaudio also does the
same, the code in question is from an era before rtkit existed. Nowadays,
most users get their RT thread from rtkit. Why isn't rtkit enough for PW?
>
> Le mer. 14 sept. 2022 à 03:08, Felipe Sateler <fsateler@debian.org> a
> écrit :
>>
>> Dylan, have you thought about how a transition plan would look like?
>
> Now, regarding the transition plan, I propose to switch right now to
> pipewire.
What does "switch right now" mean? Just switching gnome-core? What about
the other users? They would all have to switch their order from
`pulseaudio | pipewire-pulse` to `pipewire-pulse | pulseaudio`. Otherwise
you would have a different audio server depending on which order packages
are installed. Moreover, what about upgrades? Would they be forcefully
upgraded (ie, drop the pulseaudio alternative)? Or would they be allowed
to continue using pulseaudio (which wouldn't migrate them because the
dependency would be satisfied)? This is what I mean with
> This give us 4 months until the "transition and toolchain freeze" on
> 2023-01-12 [6]. We will also receive feedback from Ubuntu 22.10 (that is
> also doing the switch) planned to be released on 2022-10-20 [7].
Do you know what the transition plan for ubuntu is? Are they patching all
rdeps to switch to `pipewire-pulse`?
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