PipeWire integration discussion?

[dolphin_oracle]

Just to let you know, antiX has systemd/elogind-free debs of pipewire and wireplumber in its sid/dev repo.
I'm going to move them to antiX testing/dev (Debian 12 repos) to see how well they work (if they do at all).

@AVLinux have you used pipewire at all? the debian wiki talks about service files for pipewire. did you need to do any init files? we don't really have init files for pulseaudio, we just start it in the user startup files. can the server be started without a systemd service file?

honestly I've never messed with it at all.

No, I'm like you and haven't messed with it either, that's why I started the thread to kind of get an idea of what we were in for since it will be a pretty significant change. I didn't want to start with stale packages because they are making changes all the time and have already split the the jack and pulse clients into separate packages in Debian 12. If @Stevo is able to get some current upstream packages into MX Test I thought I could get a PipeWire setup running and see what was needed including any changes for sysvinit but it looks like @anticapitalista has that well in hand on the antiX side so maybe we will get some pooled info on that..

In any case for MX and AVL both we'll probably want to see if it can work OOTB on both init systems... On the other hand perhaps the Debian devs are working all that stuff out in Bookworm...?

I think looking forward the closer we can get the MX and AVL Audio Pipewire system defaults to being the same will save a lot of hassle and confusion... Haha if we get that figured with the Liquorix kernels and all the great MX multimedia Packaging I can obsolete myself and retire!

debian has newer packages in backports as well. if something actually needs systemd to work, (even if just an init script) I would not count on debian packagers to work it out.

[Stevo]

Here's the changelog of 0.3.58 in upstream Debian and then what had to be changed in bullseye-backports. It looks rather complicated:

Code: Select all

pipewire (0.3.58-2~bpo11+1) bullseye-backports; urgency=medium

  * Rebuild for bullseye-backports.
  * Disable XFixes, minimum required version not available in Bullseye
  * Reenable libfreeaptx, now in bullseye-backports
  * Do not mark pipewire-pulse in conflict with pulseaudio
      Bullseye (and users) is not ready for this change.

 -- Dylan Aïssi <daissi@debian.org>  Fri, 30 Sep 2022 11:30:26 +0200

pipewire (0.3.58-2) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Mention to install pipewire-alsa and pipewire-jack
      in README.Debian (Closes: #1019971)
  * Add debian/pipewire-alsa.TODO
  * Patch pipewire-pulse.service to be sure it is started
      after a session manager (Closes: #1019944)
    Because of a bug in the way systemd handles aliases, they have been removed
    in wireplumber and pipewire-media-session services to avoid a conflict.
    This change needs to be reflected in the pipewire-pulse service to be sure
    it is started after a session manager, otherwise pipewire-pulse doesn't
    see any devices.

 -- Dylan Aïssi <daissi@debian.org>  Fri, 23 Sep 2022 11:01:16 +0200

pipewire (0.3.58-1) unstable; urgency=medium

  [ Dylan Aïssi ]
  * New upstream release
      - Fix crackling sound if pavucontrol is open (Closes: #1019888)
  * Create a pipewire group and define real-time priority limits
      (Closes: #1011399)
  * Add suggestion to install wireplumber in pipewire.README.Debian
  * Clarify relation between pipewire and libspa-0.2-bluetooth in
      pipewire.README.Debian (Closes: #998220, #1011035)
  * Remove reference to experimental status of pipewire for audio

  [ Sebastien Bacher ]
  * Let pipewire-pulse conflicts on pulseaudio
      (Closes: #1013276, LP: #1975823)

 

[AVLinux]

Eeegads! That does look pretty messy... almost messy enough to file under 'too much trouble to be bothered with'. Seems like it's getting to be a square peg round hole scenario for it to work in Bullseye...

[AVLinux]

Ugh, apparently the current Wireplumber (0.4.11) is broken and doesn't request the system ALSA device properly, that's a pretty major bug, this seems like a big mess right now...

[anticapitalista]

IMO - on Debian, wireplumber and pipewire will only be 'reliable' on Debian-12 (forget trying to get it to work on Debian 11).

[Steve]

Ugh, apparently the current Wireplumber (0.4.11) is broken and doesn't request the system ALSA device properly, that's a pretty major bug, this seems like a big mess right now...

@AVLinux

I know this is a Mx discussion… but with Debian 11 and the wiki instructions everything that I have is working, with 3.19… and qjackctl to do any needful routing. did not try to up to the latest.
Kinda neat. I would recommend only using the debian11 non free iso and do the install after booting into the live environment if you wish to try it out. No issues with alsa,
Will work it harder later this week…see if it holds up steve

Update- no x-runs so far anyway. Tried recording audio and midi from midi guitar 2 vst in Reaper, always got a few x runs with just playing mg2’s presets. Midi guitar stayed in the middle of the cpu graph no spikes… Great hopes here for smooth sailing.

[AK-47]

Supposedly Debian 12 will use pipewire.

They will use PipeWire and WirePlumber by default. Smooth sailing on my Fedora install (although I've got a CF-31 Mk3 so I always need to do "alsaunmute" just like on MX).

Code: Select all

$ pipewire --version
pipewire
Compiled with libpipewire 0.3.59
Linked with libpipewire 0.3.59
$ wireplumber --version
wireplumber
Compiled with libwireplumber 0.4.12
Linked with libwireplumber 0.4.12

For getting it to work with your existing pulseaudio stuff, you need the pipewire-pulse shim installed also. Any version below about 3.30 is a waste of time.

[Steve]

Ugh, apparently the current Wireplumber (0.4.11) is broken and doesn't request the system ALSA device properly, that's a pretty major bug, this seems like a big mess right now...

@AVLinux

I know this is a Mx discussion… but with Debian 11 and the wiki instructions everything that I have is working, with 3.19… and qjackctl to do any needful routing. did not try to up to the latest.
Kinda neat. I would recommend only using the debian11 non free iso and do the install after booting into the live environment if you wish to try it out. No issues with alsa,
Will work it harder later this week…see if it holds up steve

Update- no x-runs so far anyway. Tried recording audio and midi from midi guitar 2 vst in Reaper, always got a few x runs with just playing mg2’s presets. Midi guitar stayed in the middle of the cpu graph no spikes… Great hopes here for smooth sailing.

Update 2 …
Still no x runs some weird shuddering of the mg2 vst at the start sometimes…click on the window and it stops and does not happen again in that session. Reaper locked up when I tried to save last night…
Reaper asked if I wished to close the non-responding window and shut it down all my work was saved when I loaded reaper up again. The reaper shows less than 10% on the fox cpu meter. Later…

[Steve]

Ugh, apparently the current Wireplumber (0.4.11) is broken and doesn't request the system ALSA device properly, that's a pretty major bug, this seems like a big mess right now...

@AVLinux

I know this is a Mx discussion… but with Debian 11 and the wiki instructions everything that I have is working, with 3.19… and qjackctl to do any needful routing. did not try to up to the latest.
Kinda neat. I would recommend only using the debian11 non free iso and do the install after booting into the live environment if you wish to try it out. No issues with alsa,
Will work it harder later this week…see if it holds up steve

Update- no x-runs so far anyway. Tried recording audio and midi from midi guitar 2 vst in
Reaper, always got a few x runs with just playing mg2’s presets. Midi guitar stayed in the middle of the cpu graph no spikes… Great hopes here for smooth sailing.

Update 2 …
Still no x runs some weird shuddering of the mg2 vst at the start sometimes…click on the window and it stops and does not happen again in that session. Reaper locked up when I tried to save last night…
Reaper asked if I wished to close the non-responding window and shut it down all my work was saved when I loaded reaper up again. Reaper shows less than 10% on the fox cpu meter. Later…

[DeepDayze]

IMO - on Debian, wireplumber and pipewire will only be 'reliable' on Debian-12 (forget trying to get it to work on Debian 11).

I used the test pipewire-3.58 and wireplumber 4.12 packages and set them up according to the debian 11 wiki and works for me. Even masked pulse service to keep it from starting, plus installing the pipewire-pulse package as well. YT videos play with no juddering so does audacious, including using a bt headset. So yes PW works on MX :)

Note: Sid has the PW 3.59 and wonder if that would be backported to MX test repo to try out...