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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Pipewire vs PulseAudio, general question (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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What are the main differences between pipewire and pulseaudio? Which one is better? What are other alternative popular sound servers besides these two?

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (25 children)

Pipewire is the new hotness. I've read comments from various audio engineers and programmers that pipewire "gets it right".

Pipewire came out in 2017, pulseaudio in 2004.

"PipeWire has received much praise, especially among the GNOME and Arch Linux communities. Particularly as it fixes problems that some PulseAudio users had experienced, including high CPU usage, Bluetooth connection issues, and JACK backend issues."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PipeWire

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (24 children)

Audio engineer here. Anything ALSA inherently does not "get it right". It's time for Linux to get HAL audio drivers

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Can you elaborate on what specifically makes ALSA bad, and what you mean by HAL audio drivers?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I answered below, you can also read on any of the ALSA pages as well as the wiki page for it. Wealth of knowledge on the subject is available

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

https://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/pcm.html

After application transfers the data in the memory areas, then it must be acknowledged the end of transfer via snd_pcm_mmap_commit() function to allow the ALSA library update the pointers to ring buffer. This kind of communication is also called "zero-copy", because the device does not require to copy the samples from application to another place in system memory.

When you tell RTFM expect to see manual stating opposite of your point.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

That's still not direct hardware, if you think you cracked the code then by all means show everyone otherwise, this would be a huge deal for a lot of people

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