Successful conversion to Pipewire (finally)

[linesma]

I just did the conversion from PulseAudio to Pipewire again. My last attempt back in March (or April, I do not remember for sure) did not go well at all. While I could connect my Bluetooth Sony WH-CH710N headphones to my system and get audio, Kodi would hard crash¹ the system. Also, playing anything other than 2.0 audio on either VLC or SMPlayer while using Bluetooth would also hard crash¹ the system. However, everything worked fine if I was just using the built in audio on my laptop. Not having Bluetooth, since I use my headphones all the time, was a non-starter.

I have been keeping an eye on both the Pipewire and Kodi projects. Hoping to try it out again. Reading Kodi’s project page, link, there was a pull request, link, to add Pipewire support. Pipewire has also improved their Bluetooth support. While updating my system, I noticed not only an update to Pipewire but also Kodi as well. So I though to give it a try again.

Over a period of about 4 hours, I ran a series of tests. I am happy to report that there were no issues. I tried 3 different Bluetooth headsets and various sets of corded speakers. My laptop had no problems changing the outputs. I did not run into any issues with video and audio playback no matter what program I was using or the codecs used by the files. This was quite pleasing.

Needless to say, I am happy with the results so far.

¹The system would lock completely up. I had to unplug the power and remove the battery in order to power the system off.

[M1_ke]

Congrats been using pipewire for three months now and it has been superb

[Kresimir]

I’ve been using pipewire for several months, as well. So far, I haven’t had any problems, to knock on wood.

Switching to it from pulseaudio has been trivial, I just installed the following two packages:

gst-plugin-pipewire
pipewire-pulse

I don’t use bluetooth, though.

@linesma

¹The system would lock completely up. I had to unplug the power and remove the battery in order to power the system off.

Why didn’t you use the Magic SysRQ button? Cutting the power to your computer is too savage, and can cause filesystem corruption. I know you are aware of it, but in case somebody else isn’t:

[Tip] Enable Magic SysRq Key (REISUB)

The Linux kernel authors have provided a very nice feature of issuing low-level commands to the kernel directly, regardless of the state the system is in. This is called the “Magic SysRq Key”, because these commands are issued by pressing the SysRq key on the keyboard (if you can’t find it, typically, it shares the same physical key as the Print Screen key, but on some laptops it can be elsewhere). A common use is to reboot when the computer freezes and becomes unresponsive due to some software…

[linesma]

@Kresimir

Switching to it from pulseaudio has been trivial, I just installed the following two packages:

gst-plugin-pipewire
pipewire-pulse

I don’t use bluetooth, though.

Yup, it is very simple. I also installed the pipewire-alsa package because I thought it would be needed and the lib32-pipewire package for Steam compatibility. Their Bluetooth support is what was holding them back.

@Kresimir

Why didn’t you use the Magic SysRQ button?

Learn something new every day. I did not know that and will have to look into it. Thank you.

[keybreak]

@linesma

because I thought it would be needed and the lib32-pipewire package for Steam compatibility.

Yep, until all programs will support pipewire natively it’s good idea to have both pipewire-alsa and pipewire-pulse