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Steam Client Beta updated with PipeWire desktop capture for Remote Play

By - | Views: 23,313

Valve continue upgrading and tweaking the Steam client with a fresh Beta version being released today with a couple of tweaks that are interesting for Linux users.

Some of the issues fixed are for everyone including slow startup after suspend, Cloud Sync will now happen as soon as possible to avoid delays launching games and for Remote Play they fixed using multiple PS5 controllers from the Steam Link app.

Just for Linux though these caught my eye today:

  • Enabled pipewire desktop capture by default on Linux, pass -nopipewire on the command line to disable it
  • Fixed Linux games seeing multiple controllers when Steam controller configuration support is enabled
  • Fixed Linux clients not getting any controller input once streaming starts

Some real nice fixes, the controller issues are something I came up against a couple of times. The first one is the bigger and more interesting change as PipeWire is basically the next-generation of audio and video on Linux. As the official website states:

It 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. PipeWire was designed with a powerful security model that makes interacting with audio and video devices from containerized applications easy, with supporting Flatpak applications being the primary goal. Alongside Wayland and Flatpak we expect PipeWire to provide a core building block for the future of Linux application development.

So now that Valve are using it for Remote Play, perhaps this will work even better (especially on Wayland). This is quite likely another improvement to ready up for the Steam Deck, since we already know games will be played on it inside a Wayland session along with it using Gamescope.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Apps, Beta, Misc, Steam
39 Likes
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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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21 comments
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ljrk Sep 23, 2021
Quoting: MohandevirIs Pipewire the solution to the long standing audio degradation issue with PulseAudio, when it comes to in-home streaming from a Linux host?

I have to disable all HDMI audio devices in Pavucontrol of the host computer to prevent that from happening.

I had the same issue but didn't know about that solution. I also didn't try yet with Pipewire again. Need to check something...
denyasis Sep 23, 2021
Yeah, my knowledge of the Linux audio stack isn't strong enough to try to replace PulseAudio with PipeWire just yet. I'll hopefully be able to try the work around in a few days on my day off.
sebastianlacuesta Sep 23, 2021
Quoting: MohandevirIs Pipewire the solution to the long standing audio degradation issue with PulseAudio, when it comes to in-home streaming from a Linux host?

I have to disable all HDMI audio devices in Pavucontrol of the host computer to prevent that from happening.

Three simple words:

Yes it is!

I just removed it in debian in favor of pipewire-pulse. Done replacement fake pulse audio packages with equivs to solve dependency problems and bye bye pulse audio crackling system
ljrk Sep 23, 2021
Quoting: sebastianlacuesta
Quoting: MohandevirIs Pipewire the solution to the long standing audio degradation issue with PulseAudio, when it comes to in-home streaming from a Linux host?

I have to disable all HDMI audio devices in Pavucontrol of the host computer to prevent that from happening.

Three simple words:

Yes it is!

I just removed it in debian in favor of pipewire-pulse. Done replacement fake pulse audio packages with equivs to solve dependency problems and bye bye pulse audio crackling system

Hm, for me it didn't solve the issue, I just tested. I think that it took some more time to occur though


Last edited by ljrk on 23 September 2021 at 10:42 pm UTC
recioalex Sep 24, 2021
Pipewire can do Hardware encoding on AMD hardware? Because that was a big missing piece for mi on In-Home-Streaming...


Last edited by recioalex on 24 September 2021 at 6:44 am UTC
Guppy Sep 24, 2021
I stopped using in home streaming all together because so many games just cast audio and a black screen, hopefully this will solve the issue :D
furaxhornyx Sep 24, 2021
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Quoting: ElectricPrism[...]
My ex-linux audio recording buddies biggest complaint used to be PulseAudio was terrible & JACK was very difficult to configure and maintain (2016?). They are more hopeful that pipewire is better but yet to try it. [...]

Same here ; I looked into installing Pipewire a few months ago, but from a few forums posts, it still seemed to be not mature enough yet... And with my little Linux knowledge, I am afraid I cannot fix anything if it goes wrong, so I'll be waiting a bit more
3zekiel Sep 24, 2021
Quoting: MohandevirIs Pipewire the solution to the long standing audio degradation issue with PulseAudio, when it comes to in-home streaming from a Linux host?

I have to disable all HDMI audio devices in Pavucontrol of the host computer to prevent that from happening.

I am not sure for in home streaming, but for local audio, it already solved quite a few quality issues and bugs for me. In particular, with the latest bluetooth work, LDAC is finally working properly for me. And overall audio seems to be less prone to crackling which I had with pulse.
Hope this helps.
libgradev Sep 24, 2021
Quoting: sebastianlacuesta
Quoting: MohandevirIs Pipewire the solution to the long standing audio degradation issue with PulseAudio, when it comes to in-home streaming from a Linux host?

I have to disable all HDMI audio devices in Pavucontrol of the host computer to prevent that from happening.

Three simple words:

Yes it is!

I just removed it in debian in favor of pipewire-pulse. Done replacement fake pulse audio packages with equivs to solve dependency problems and bye bye pulse audio crackling system

I've stopped using IHS at the moment but switching to Pipewire at the time (~6 months ago) didn't fix this issue.

The only thing that did, as mentioned earlier, was disabling local audio on the host.
libgradev Sep 24, 2021
Quoting: GuppyI stopped using in home streaming all together because so many games just cast audio and a black screen, hopefully this will solve the issue :D

I've seen this streaming to my phone - watch the resolution on the host PC (switched mine down to 1440p and got video).
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