PipeWire: The Linux audio/video bus
> <i>including the raw Linux ALSA sound API, which typically allows only one application to access the sound card.</i><p>If the <i>raw</i> in that sentence is not meant as a special qualifier and this is meant as a statement about ALSA in general, this is wrong. I recently read up on this to confirm my memory was right when reading a similar statement. In fact, ALSA had just a very short period where typically only one application accessed the sound card. After that, dmix was enabled by default. Supporting multiple applications was actually the big advantage of ALSA compared to OSS, which at the time really did support only one application per soundcard (without hardware mixing, which broke away at that time). I'm not sure why this seems to be remembered so wrongly?<p>> <i>Speaking of transitions, Fedora 8's own switch to PulseAudio in late 2007 was not a smooth one. Longtime Linux users still remember having the daemon branded as the software that will break your audio.</i><p>This wasn't just a Fedora problem. Ubuntu when making the switch also broke Audio on countless of systems. I was active as supporter in a Ubuntu support forum at that time and we got flooded with help requests. My very own system did not work with Pulseaudio when I tried to switch, that was years later. I still use only ALSA because of that experience. At that time Pulseaudio was garbage, it should never have been used then. It only got acceptable later - but still has bugs and issues.<p>That said, PipeWire has a better vibe than Pulseaudio did. It intends to replace a system that never worked flawlessly, seems to focus on compatibility, and the apparent endorsement from the JACK-developers also does not hurt. User reports I have seen so far have been positive, though I'm not deep into support forums anymore. Maybe this can at least replace Pulseaudio, that would be a win. I'm cautiously optimistic about this one.