Will Linux Mint 21 have PipeWire support? It should atleast be optional.

[Hugh Neutron]

Hello, I would like to know if Linux Mint 21 has plans for adopting https://pipewire.org/ as a successor replacement for PulseAudio? For those that don't know, PipeWire is a project that aims to greatly improve handling of audio and video under Linux.



PipeWire is Red Hat technology. When it comes to Linux; Red Hat runs the show. Refusing to keep up with their open source innovation is a one way ticket to becoming an obscure distro. PipeWire is a new low level audio system designed to succeed Pulse Audio. Pipewire will pave the way for multimedia production on Linux. (something it has historically and still to this day has been bad at). I want Linux and open source to be better at Multimedia production and I am sure others do as well.

PipeWire includes

Capture and playback of audio and video with minimal latency.

Real-time Multimedia processing on audio and video.

Multiprocess architecture to let applications share multimedia content.

Seamless support for PulseAudio, JACK, ALSA and GStreamer applications.

Sandboxed applications support. See Flatpak for more info.

---

Sure, I know it will be possible to manually build PipeWire on any modern distro, but if Linux Mint cares about HQ desktop experience for real world work you guys should consider adopting PipeWire in the next major release. Pay close attention to Fedora 34 as they are pioneering it.

[MrEen]

As Ubuntu 21.04 will have PipeWire, it's a mostly safe bet that Mint 21 will as well. Almost everything sound related in Mint comes from Ubuntu.

That said, it's still buggy software, and I'd be surprised if Ubuntu implemented it properly at first. But there's a year of testing it before Mint 21 comes out so we can hope a lot of the kinks are worked out by then. But it's already 4 year old software and is still in the beta stage really.

It's just my opinion, but there are too many changes happening in the sound subsystem all at once to have any hope of getting it all right in a decent amount of time. And right now, PipeWire is just another layer that will still be on top of PulseAudio (or JACK) presently (yes, it may replace them down the road, but not yet) which sit on top of ALSA. Trying to find the source of sound issues is just going to become much more difficult to troubleshoot.

[scott8035]

I think you're over-estimating RedHat's reach. In the enterprise, they may rule the roost, but that said, the internet runs on a huge number of Debian-based systems, too. If it weren't for the hosting market's use of the free but now obsolete CentOS, not that many people would have exposure to RedHat. Compare the number of Fedora users to the number of Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/etc. users for a comparable example on the desktop.

IBM owns RedHat now, and in many circles that may as well have been the kiss of death.

[Moem]

Mod note:
Fixed a lot of misspellings. Things are clearer and easier to search for if you don't call PipeWire 'PireWire'.

[SMG]

I think you're over-estimating RedHat's reach. In the enterprise, they may rule the roost, but that said, the internet runs on a huge number of Debian-based systems, too. If it weren't for the hosting market's use of the free but now obsolete CentOS, not that many people would have exposure to RedHat. Compare the number of Fedora users to the number of Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/etc. users for a comparable example on the desktop.

IBM owns RedHat now, and in many circles that may as well have been the kiss of death.

You resurrected a topic which had been dormant for 18 months. LM21 has now been released so speculation on what might happen is no longer relevant.

Locking the old topic.