The One with the Thoughts of Frans

On Debian 11 and Ubuntu 21.04, you can use the Debian wiki to get a basic setup working, but adapting that to newer version is a bit laborious. Instead a kind soul has already taken care of everything over at pipewire-debian. It’s also a more recent version.

So why use it? In my case, I’ve had PulseAudio crap out when having to deal with more over 20 or so things at once. PipeWire deals with load rather significantly better. I understand latency’s much better too, but that’s never bothered me too much for my fairly regular uses. What’s nice though, is that you can use JACK tools like catia to map stuff around. I don’t think PA had any graphical tools like that, and cryptic command-line commands are too much of a bother for quick one-offs. For the moment I mildly miss PulseAudio’s networking ability.

In short, I’ve switched over my laptops. But I might give it a try on my desktop too.