I’d it true that the systemd sound server, publicly referred to as pipewire, is a dependency of the plasma desktop and that if you try to replace the systemd sound server, publicly known as pipewire, that the entire plasma desktop will uninstall as well?
Just looking for independent verification from those who use plasma desktop.
Ty.
On Arch, pipewire is a requirement of kwin, the window manager used by plasma.
I don’t know if that is a hard requirement of plasma from the kde project or if it simply means the Arch maintainer chose to compile in pipewire support.
As a side note, pipewire is also a dependency for xdg-desktop-portal which means you need it for flatpak support on any system.
That being said, I don’t really see how installing the package pipewire has any negative impact on your system. Without it’s optional components installed, not much will use it.
I think the issue for me at least is the continual chipping away at the FOSS behind the linux system, specifically the freedom to choose which sound server one wishes to use. The more DEs require a specific sound server the less choice there is for the end user.
The writing is on the wall, systemd (or some future package) is here to stay. I think so is pipewire, at least till something better comes.
You may still choose, but the quality of your results may vary. And eventually, if everyone is supporting one standard (yes good, yes bad, who knows) that may end up being the only architectural choice.
In the end, as long as it’s open source, I would choose the one that is technologically the better choice, wouldn’t you ?
I am not sure there is a relationship between FOSS and the ability to use a specific sound server. Those seem like unrelated concepts to me. 
Again, I am not sure if the DE requires it or if the maintainer chose to compile in that support making it a requirement.
I just installed Arch kde Plasma with minimal install. Just plasma and then i added the other pkgs i wanted. Pipewire is installed as @dalto said because it’s required by kwin.
[ricklinux@Arch ~]$ pacman -Qi pipewire
Name : pipewire
Version : 1:0.3.25-1
Description : Low-latency audio/video router and processor
Architecture : x86_64
URL : https://pipewire.org
Licenses : LGPL
Groups : None
Provides : libpipewire-0.3.so=0-64
Depends On : rtkit alsa-card-profiles libdbus-1.so=3-64 libncursesw.so=6-64 libsndfile.so=1-64 libudev.so=1-64 libasound.so=2-64 libsystemd.so=0-64 libbluetooth.so=3-64 libsbc.so=1-64
libldacBT_enc.so=2-64 libopenaptx.so=0-64 libfdk-aac.so=2-64 libvulkan.so=1-64
Optional Deps : pipewire-docs: Documentation
pipewire-media-session: Default session manager
pipewire-alsa: ALSA configuration
pipewire-jack: JACK support
pipewire-pulse: PulseAudio replacement
gst-plugin-pipewire: GStreamer support
Required By : kwin
Optional For : chromium
Conflicts With : None
Replaces : None
Installed Size : 5.88 MiB
Packager : Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) <heftig@archlinux.org>
Build Date : Tue 06 Apr 2021 10:11:05 AM
Install Date : Fri 16 Apr 2021 07:50:38 PM
Install Reason : Installed as a dependency for another package
Install Script : Yes
Validated By : Signature
[ricklinux@Arch ~]$
