On Wed, 29 Sep 2021, Ruben Safir wrote:
also, theres now pipewire, which is new, and all the buzz. its apparently the future of linux audio
BTW - we hear the BS every month, and yet, ALSA is still here and the backbone of Linux sound...
PipeWire is not really a replacement for ALSA, if by ALSA mean the Linux kernel audio subsystem, as it still needs to access audio hardware via ALSA kernel drivers.
If we include alsa-lib in ALSA, then, with proper configuration, not really out of the box, PipeWire can replace the plugin hierarchy that is normally set up in /etc/asound.conf etc.
But PipeWire is purely userspace, and is really more of a replacement for JACK and PulseAudio at the same time. It does seem to be the future in the sense that although it's still in development, it's here now, and it works out of the box at least in some distributions.
/Ricard