Too much of the Linux ecosystem expects it to be there. :/

I finally was able to get a USB dongle today. Bluetooth 5.0, tp-link, cost me ₱400 ($7).

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Luxury! You spoiled your belly!

What? There aren't China Shops on Philippines?

BTW, let me explain what I understand by "China Shop" : on every urban settlement from my country is at least one shop named "China Shop" and managed by a Chinese guy (or lady) and selling various Chinese goods. All of them being cheap.

These China Shops have stands with shoes, pants, shirts, various other goods ending with electronics. Like the radios, smartphones, headphones, various other electronics related things, ending with WiFi or Bluetooth dongles, but I have seen China Shops selling mini-PCs or even ARM boards.

I familiar with those types of shops. The public market sell just about everything.

No. The reason why you cannot uninstall pulseaudio is because you need to recompile your base slackware packages that link it. People have done this, and everything still works. Even pipewire will compile without pulseaudio. Once that is done, then you can removepkg pulseaudio. Nothing truly requires pulseaudio to have functioning audio in the linux ecosystem.

Unfortunately, not all the applications was ported to PipeWire yet.

Someday will happen, but isn't that day yet. Notable, there is no PipeWire equivalent for the audio controls on Plasma5, like it's for PulseAudio. And yes, I do not want to use TWM instead just because "PulseAudio sucks!" ...

And NOPE, I do not believe that we should go using ALSA backend everywhere and accept limitations with serenity, just because some people loves to play hattin' PulseAudio. Anyway, also Slackware put ideas like this on the recycle bin. Long time ago.

Anyway, I remember that Mr. Hameleers said that PulseAudio is here to stay. So, I guess that Slackware will be the last Linux distribution which will ditch PulseAudio in favor of PipeWire.

Yes
But:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post6429981

We are not in a hurry, anyway

I have to unfortunately agree that it isn't quite time to dump Pulse in favor of Pipewire just yet. but I will be grateful when it does because Pulse does suck, at least for serious audio work. Apparently it's great for casual listeners who depend on onboard audio but that's about all.

Please correct me if I am mistaken but is there ant software that does ALSA's job? Doesn't ALL audio still depend on ALSA even if it is sort of hidden? Maybe I'm wrong to take you literally at your word but considering it appears to be a pattern over time and many posts, but I take issue with your characterization of pulseadio haters as merely playing at hating. I spent countless hours learning ALSA configuration for at least 3 different audio systems to get it to do exactly what I want with the least penalties and then along came Pulseaudio and ruined almost everything for me. It took months to determine how to get back even close to the performance I had enjoyed for years. This is only so far about my investment in time.

For hardware, my current soundcard sells in the US in 2023 for $419.00. Not counting peripherals like multichannel mixers, effects, microphones, cables or DAW, etc. the support hardware (speakers and amplifiers alone) cost roughly twice that, so well over $1200.00 USD hardware investment on top of the additional countless hours learning DAW work in Linux. Pulseaudio made that immeasurably harder and cost me a great deal of time and productivity.

I am indeed a Pulseaudio Hater but I am most certainly not playing around. Just because it apparently made your work flow easier does not mean it did that for everyone. For some of us Pulseaudio has been a Royal PITA. I don't begrudge anyone that loves what Pulse did for them but it is simply wrong to try to pass off all pulse haters as wallowing in trivial nonsense. There is a reason ALSA has stuck around since 1998 and was supported in the Linux kernel by 2002 while Pulse in less than 5 years is seeking replacement by the very same organization that wrote it. That's why Pipewire has been dubbed by many as "Pulseaudio 2.0"and still depends on ALSA. There is also a reason that ProTools is only available for Mac and Windows and audio support is the main one.

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Yes. We're still using ALSA in the back end. I don't think OSS ever made any serious traction.

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to my next computer, which will likely not have a PCI slot for my m-audio delta 1010LT. Multi-channel audio is *expensive* because it's niche. You can get a good focusrite or behringer USB device for $200-300, though. Hopefully those prices don't skyrocket.

I was not suggesting to port all applications to Pipewire. I only mentioned that Pipewire's rollout may bring choice again in audio configuration if done correctly. Though pipewire is not needed either. Only it shows promise.

I have not suggested that people abandon Plasma 5 for TWM over audio controls. Don't delve into absurdities here.

I was explaining that even today, Pulseaudio is not absolutely required in a Linux distro for audio. It never really was. And you can still kick it out in Slackware. Or you can KEEP it in slackware and get a pulseaudio mixer. I don't care. Use any DE/WM you want. If pipewire doesn't work for you, don't use it!

Strange. I have found that Pulseaudio depends on ALSA, and so whatever Pulseaudio does, ALSA really does it. That includes all the fancy features. And with Pulseaudio kicked out of the way, the mixer functions as it should. There are no limitations... and you can get control of your mixer. This is the opposite of limitations. Having this choice is great. But whatever. Just stick to nonsense and make up stories of a hating fest, and you'll get nowhere.

Mr. Hameleers is not the BDFL of Slackware. And an argument what goes in or out of slackware is moot. You have the choice of what to use right now with Slackware 15.0. And the strategy to ditch Pulseaudio in Slackware officially will not be my concern. I'm only suggesting that you do have choices, and whatever gets adopted officially will get evaluated at the time for impact.

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/usr/sbin/pipewire-enable.sh > enter > and breath, that's better no more pulseaudio.
Huge thanks for the pipewire-enable.sh script :-)))))))

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In fact, it's no more PulseAudio server running, because it was replaced by a PipeWire daemon.

Otherwise, the PulseAudio client libraries continue to be used as usual.

The thanks should go to our BDFL for it.

I have now come full circle, after getting weird behaviour in pipewire namely when streaming films audio/video was not in sync.
After looking into config and changing a few things found on LinuxQuestions, and other source's audio/video sync was better but still out.
I opted for the sledge hammer approach uninstalled pipewire and wireplumber and made a /etc/asound.conf for my soundcard. Hey presto synced audio/video in chrome, just a few apps needed help as they are addicted to pulseaudio and wont even build without it. I found a tiny app called apulse "https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse" also on sbo, that enables them to work and stop withdrawal symptoms.
I was most impressed that spotify had not gone down the pulseaudio only route as it sounds outstanding on premium set to audio quality very high playing direct through alsa default device.

Sound playback has lost all crackles and glitches and overall system is more responsive, I understand why things are being setup with pulseaudio to make life easier for a lot of user's.
But as I found linux version of google-chrome was made with pulseaudio as the only option and then after numerous issue's and complaints they added back option to use alsa or oss via startup option. /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --alsa-output-device='name device/plug you wish to use' available in Version 114.0.5735.198. This say's a lot to me when google back track on a decision :-))))

I have had to recompile a few stock packages so they detect that pulseaudio/pipewire are not installed as few apps failed in builds due to lib files linking to pulseaudio lib's that aren't present Sox to name one.

I think when looking at other distro's and see they have defaulted to pulseaudio/pipewire there going to loose a lot of user's. As you aren't able to do as I have in Slackware and remove them. Then setup alsa as all of there app's using sound are compiled against it and there is no option to change that.

OK, slackware current, pipewire 0.7.38, i've tried both Pat's build enabled for jack, and using Alien Bob's pipewire-jack package. Every time I try to boot the server with supercollider I get:

I have pipewire's jack implemented using this step: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post6426997

Any ideas what might be going on? I didn't have this problem with 0.3.77. Is it the lua changes?

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here's what I found out:

pipewire-0.3.78 with Alien Bob's pipewire-jack 0.3.78 doesn't work with supercolider 3.12 or 3.13.
Pat's build of pipewire with jack enabled doesn't work with supercollider 3.12 or 3.13.

Supercollider 3.12 with pipewire 0.3.77 works.
Supercollider 3.13 with pipewire 0.3.77 works.

Who should get the bug report? Supercollider or pipewire?

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