 There has been a lot of talk lately about the future of Linux and in particular there's been a lot of talk about pipe wire being the future of Linux and pipe wire for those of you who don't know is the replacement for false audio and such technologies like that it's more complicated than that and you'll need somebody who's more technologically advanced in order to actually explain it to you I'm not a developer so my level of technical expertise when it comes to audio usually Involved shouting at the computer. Hey pulse audio. Why aren't you working you stupid son? Yeah, that's usually what I do if the computer wasn't you know up on a desk I'd probably kick the damn thing every time audio decided not to work I've probably hurt myself but the point is is that pipe wire is being made to replace pulse audio because Everyone has this idea that pulse audio is bad and that we should not use pulse audio anymore So we need something new to replace it. That's the idea Anyways, so the question I have had for a long time is that is pulse audio really that bad So I've had a lot of negative experiences with audio on Linux over the last four years It's just something that everyone who records audio goes through whether it's problems with OBS having problems with audio Audacity having problems with audio having problems with audio system-wide the problem that I face the most is That pulse audio seems to switch Default inputs after an update like every time it gets updated The inputs are no longer remembered and it goes back to usually the input goes to this webcam That's sitting on this monitor here And I don't realize it that until after I've done a video and the audio is terrible So I have to reshoot the video and it pisses me off So the question of whether or not pulse audio is bad is Complicated because for the most part pulse audio actually does work. It works well Is it perfect? No, it's not even close to perfect but there's nothing out there that is perfect and I think that's the main problem I have with pipe wire is that we're replacing Something that isn't perfect with something that isn't perfect. So all we're going to be doing by Promoting and spreading the use of pipe wire is Bringing in new problems for audio We know that that's true because a lot of times when I'm on a system that's using pipe wire Things break because pipe wires knew there's going to be flaws in it. It's not perfect So what are we actually gaining by switching to pipe wire? I'm sure there are technical things that make pipe wire actually better than pulse audio right at this moment and the future for pipe wire is bright It's it's technologically superior to pulse audio in every way in the future We can probably all agree on that but right at this moment what do we gain and My answer to that question is I don't think we gain anything All we do is trade some problems that we've been experiencing for years for new problems that we probably solved years ago so The thing about building something brand news something building something from the ground up to replace something that we've already done is that The people who are developing pipe wire are going to be going through and Experiencing and having to solve every single issue That we have already solved with pulse audio years back now. I didn't use Linux full-time 10 15 years ago I know a lot of people who did though and everyone who Hat did use Linux back then has told me that audio was garbage It was so bad if you've watched any of the Lunduk's Linux sucks from You know 10 years ago one of the number one things on it was the audio was bad And he did that every single year and the thing about it is that over the last 20 years Audio has finally gotten to the point where it's good enough like it's usable And we finally managed to get pulse audio to the point where for the most part it works Are there still flaws? Hell, yes, there's still flaws. We should fix those But did we really need to tear it apart and build something new? To the point where we're actually going to have to fight and struggle through those 10 15 years worth of struggles For some that new product, you know, because we're gonna they're going to go through and come up across Problems that had already been solved. I don't think at this moment pipe wire offers anything But pain for most people and the reason why this is important is Because distros are switching to pipe wire left and right so things like Geruda use pipe wire Arco has pipe wire installed Although for the most part from what I can tell it still uses pulse audio as its default things like Ubuntu Fedora uses pipe wire a lot of distros are switching to pipe wire as their default now and In the grand scheme of things. Maybe it's be unequal footing with pulse audio and the things that are wrong with pulse audio and pipe wire There are equal number of things wrong with both of them. Let's just say that that's true I don't think it's personally true because every time I use pipe wire something breaks. Maybe pipe wire doesn't like me It's 100% possible. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Also 100% possible. It happens a lot So, you know, I don't personally think that pipe wires There yet like I know Wayland isn't ready yet. I know that for a fact. Okay. I think everybody Knows that for a fact or at least the people who do video work know it for a fact because OBS Just does not work well, you know in Wayland. It doesn't okay So we've managed to come to that conclusion a lot of people at least I don't know what the Ubuntu guys are doing because they've switched to that thing by default You know for and they're the biggest distro out there and I just don't think it's I just know It's not ready yet. Okay, because it has problems on a video hardware as problems with With video capture and screen screen capture. It's not there yet. I think the same is true for pipe wire It's just not there yet. And I question I continue to question whether or not it even needs to be done despite my problems with pulse audio I don't know that we need to Tear the whole house down to make something better. Now don't get me wrong. I like change as much as the next guy I think that we should always be pushing towards progress Stay resting on your laurels is not a good way of building an operating system or an application It's not I mean, that's exactly what windows does is they there's a reason why half of windows looks Sparkly and new and the other half looks like it was developed in 1995 Because they continue to just build on top of what they've already done and you know, it makes a for mess It makes it makes it messy, right? So we don't want that. So there's nothing wrong with Theoretically creating something new the problem I have is that I think we're Switching to it may be a little bit too fast and Maybe this is just the personal experiences I've had coming out, you know to play and influencing my opinion because like I said every time I've tried pipe wire Things have gone wrong. I mean there was at one point I if you watch the channel for any amount of time, you'll know a few weeks ago I was doing I was going to be doing a stream with Tyler We were going to play a game and before that stream We realized that my audio on my system was broken after it got so bad that we thought that it was actually my computer But instead it was because what was going on was that both of the distros that I had installed on two different hard drives Both used pipe wire and they were both using the exact same version of pipe wire And they both had the same problem in that it was confusing the input and off Output so that I it was actually reading two inputs instead of having an output from the computer it was very weird and very stupid and Because it was happening on both distros. I thought it was the computer, but it was actually pipe wire now Like I said, maybe that experience is coloring my views and I would say that it isn't coloring my views because That's the way you form opinions is by Experiencing things and then giving your opinions based on the things that you experience So I think that at the end of the day We're probably going to be fine But I think that we're over the next couple of years We're going to realize that a lot of the problems we have with audio are because we switched to pipe wire Just a little bit too soon There is another side to it of course that if we didn't switch to audio so soon that we wouldn't have so many developers Working on it. So if this had remained just a fedora project, it would just be the fedora guys working on it Right so by spreading out and having a whole bunch of developers use this thing and have a whole bunch of users using it Bugs get reported bugs get fixed at least theoretically and pipe wire will actually get better faster So that is a good argument for doing it I just worry that somewhere along the line my favorite distro is going to switch to pipe wire full-time and My audio setup will crash and burn and the the work on YouTube will just dry up And I'll just be a sad sad sad little man because my audio doesn't work anymore So that's I guess that that was the point is that I'm You know not looking forward to that future. Hopefully pipe wire gets better before that happens Anyway, so that is it for this video. I know it was a bit of a ranty slash ramble video That's kind of what I've been doing lately So I hope you enjoyed that if you enjoyed more of this kind of content You can make sure you hit that subscribe button hit the like button I'd say hit the dislike button But how would you know if you'd done so if so if you were successful Uh because there's no dislike button anymore That's I don't know whether or not that's sad or not. I didn't really cover that on the channel item. I mean there's Everybody else covered it. So I don't think it really needed any more of my input. Anyway, so You can leave a comment in the comment section below whether or not you think pipe wire is ready You can follow me on twitter at the linux cast you can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash linux cast Before I go I'd like to take a moment to thank my current patrons Devon chris east coast web gen 2 is fun too patrick o primus today marcus meglin jackson fjull steve Mitchell art center mta s merit camp jashley j dog the bsd's raffin keteray. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time