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Bringing together audio and video, PipeWire for Linux is really coming along

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PipeWire, the next-generation of modern Linux audio and video appears to be coming along nicely and it appears it's ready for wider testing.

Writing in a blog post, Red Hat's Senior Manager for Desktop, Christian F.K. Schaller did a summary of a presentation done by another Red Hatter Wim Taymans. As a quick primer - PipeWire provides a low-latency, graph based processing engine on top of audio and video devices that can be used to support the use cases currently handled by both PulseAudio and JACK and it's made so it can work well with container systems like Flatpak too. PipeWire should also work directly with anything made for ALSA, PulseAudio and JACK - so you shouldn't see breakage with it.

So how is progess? Great by the sound of it. According to the write-up, it's at a stage where PulseAudio, Jack and ALSA backends should be properly usable and close to 100% complete. Which is why they're ready to ask for wider testing, to have a go at using it on your own Linux systems.

They've even written a standalone library that can be used with both PipeWire and PulseAudio to handle ALSA sound card profiles, devices, mixers and UCM (use case manager) used to configure some newer audio chips (like the Lenovo X1 Carbon) which then provides the correct info to audio applications like GNOME Control Center or PulseAudio Volume Control which also means devices names won't change.

All the work going into it sounds quite impressive, and their commitment to have things continue working with what's already in place is great.

More info in the blog post on testing. More info about PipeWire itself here.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Open Source
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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15 comments
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Purple Library Guy Sep 8, 2020
I have a feeling that as more outfits use Blender, increased development on audio/video systems for Linux itself may come as a byproduct.
slaapliedje Sep 8, 2020
Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: slaapliedjeStill wish the Sailfish phones came to the US, and my N9 / N900 hadn't been killed off by Nokia. N900 is still my favorite phone I've ever owned.
For my current phone I went for the cheapest piece of hardware supported by Sailfish X I could find for sale locally (the Sony Xperia 10), and then bought the OS separately. The phone isn't great but it does the job, and Sailfish is the only mobile OS I can tolerate. Jolla doesn't produce hardware anymore, so Sailfish X is the way to go.

Anyway, this doesn't help you much seeing as the OS is only available in "EU, Norway, Switzerland" according to Jolla's site.
Yeah, otherwise I would be using it. Been tempted to install UBPorts on my Sony phone, but it sounds like it doesn't support the Z2 very well. Also waiting for my Librem phone..
elmapul Sep 8, 2020
". PipeWire should also work directly with anything made for ALSA, PulseAudio and JACK - so you shouldn't see breakage with it."

yeah, i already saw this movie before.
axredneck Sep 8, 2020
Looks like it works. Now i need something like pavucontrol for it.
bisbyx Sep 8, 2020
It sounds like what I've been doing with JACK but better (I've just been using it as a mixing board). I haven't looked much at pipewire because for some reason when I see "and video" I assume it's going to somehow be wayland related (which I personally am not ready for)... but it sounds like it's more "and video CAPTURE" rather than video output. Now I kinda want to try this.
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