How to completely remove PulseAudio?

How do completely remove PulseAudio? When I installed PipeWire using sudo pacman -S manjaro-pipewire, it prompts for conflicts between existing Pulesaudio packages and I entered Yes for everything. After reboot, inxi -Fazy still shows PulseAudio as a Sound server but it’s not running. I also checked systemctl, but no Pulseaudio-related services running.

inxi -Fazy output:

System:
  Kernel: 5.15.85-1-MANJARO arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 12.2.0
    parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.15-x86_64
    root=UUID=7699822a-f9ff-4a88-8441-057b8de4b1b4 rw apparmor=1
    security=apparmor udev.log_priority=3
  Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.26.4 tk: Qt v: 5.15.7 wm: kwin_x11 vt: 1 dm: SDDM
    Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux
Machine:
  Type: Portable System: Dell product: Inspiron 5555 v: A12
    serial: <superuser required> Chassis: type: 8 v: A12
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Dell model: 0CHHXW v: A00 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Dell
    v: A12 date: 08/30/2016
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT1 charge: 37.5 Wh (100.0%) condition: 37.5/41.4 Wh (90.5%)
    volts: 16.5 min: 14.8 model: SIMPLO DELL VN3N047E47F type: Li-ion
    serial: <filter> status: full
CPU:
  Info: model: AMD A10-8700P Radeon R6 10 Compute Cores 4C+6G bits: 64
    type: MT MCP arch: Excavator level: v3 note: check built: 2015
    process: GF 28nm family: 0x15 (21) model-id: 0x60 (96) stepping: 1
    microcode: 0x6006110
  Topology: cpus: 1x cores: 4 smt: enabled cache: L1: 320 KiB
    desc: d-4x32 KiB; i-2x96 KiB L2: 2 MiB desc: 2x1024 KiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1436 high: 1494 min/max: 1300/1800 boost: enabled
    scaling: driver: acpi-cpufreq governor: performance cores: 1: 1423 2: 1413
    3: 1494 4: 1415 bogomips: 14377
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
  Vulnerabilities:
  Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected
  Type: l1tf status: Not affected
  Type: mds status: Not affected
  Type: meltdown status: Not affected
  Type: mmio_stale_data status: Not affected
  Type: retbleed mitigation: untrained return thunk; SMT vulnerable
  Type: spec_store_bypass mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via
    prctl and seccomp
  Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer
    sanitization
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Retpolines, STIBP: disabled, RSB filling,
    PBRSB-eIBRS: Not affected
  Type: srbds status: Not affected
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Wani [Radeon R5/R6/R7 Graphics] vendor: Dell driver: amdgpu
    v: kernel arch: GCN-3 code: Volcanic Islands process: TSMC 28nm
    built: 2014-19 ports: active: eDP-1 empty: HDMI-A-1 bus-ID: 00:01.0
    chip-ID: 1002:9874 class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: Microdia Integrated Webcam HD type: USB driver: uvcvideo
    bus-ID: 2-4:3 chip-ID: 0c45:6712 class-ID: 0e02
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.6 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.7
    compositor: kwin_x11 driver: X: loaded: amdgpu unloaded: modesetting
    alternate: fbdev,vesa dri: radeonsi gpu: amdgpu display-ID: :0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1366x768 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 361x203mm (14.21x7.99")
    s-diag: 414mm (16.31")
  Monitor-1: eDP-1 mapped: eDP model: BOE Display 0x0661 built: 2016
    res: 1366x768 hz: 60 dpi: 101 gamma: 1.2 size: 344x194mm (13.54x7.64")
    diag: 395mm (15.5") ratio: 16:9 modes: max: 1366x768 min: 640x480
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 22.3.1 renderer: AMD Radeon R6 Graphics (carrizo
    LLVM 14.0.6 DRM 3.42 5.15.85-1-MANJARO) direct render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Kabini HDMI/DP Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel
    v: kernel bus-ID: 00:01.1 chip-ID: 1002:9840 class-ID: 0403
  Device-2: AMD Family 15h Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
    bus-ID: 00:09.2 chip-ID: 1022:157a class-ID: 0403
  Sound API: ALSA v: k5.15.85-1-MANJARO running: yes
  Sound Interface: sndio v: N/A running: no
  Sound Server-1: JACK v: 1.9.21 running: no
  Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 16.1 running: no
  Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.63 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet vendor: Dell
    driver: r8169 v: kernel pcie: gen: 1 speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: e000
    bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8136 class-ID: 0200
  IF: enp1s0 state: down mac: <filter>
  Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter
    vendor: Dell Vostro 3470 driver: ath9k v: kernel pcie: gen: 1 speed: 2.5 GT/s
    lanes: 1 bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 168c:0036 class-ID: 0280
  IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 2-1:10
    chip-ID: 0cf3:e005 class-ID: e001
  Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 5 state: up address: see --recommends
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 1.03 TiB used: 981.07 GiB (93.4%)
  SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
  ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: A-Data model: SU800 size: 119.24 GiB
    block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD
    serial: <filter> rev: 8BS scheme: GPT
  ID-2: /dev/sdb maj-min: 8:16 vendor: Seagate model: ST1000LM048-2E7172
    size: 931.51 GiB block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s
    type: HDD rpm: 5400 serial: <filter> rev: 0001 scheme: GPT
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw-size: 118.95 GiB size: 116.77 GiB (98.17%)
    used: 82.79 GiB (70.9%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 maj-min: 8:2
  ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 300 MiB size: 299.4 MiB (99.80%)
    used: 288 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1
Swap:
  Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default)
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 4 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2
    file: /swapfile
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 70.0 C mobo: 60.0 C sodimm: SODIMM C gpu: amdgpu
    temp: 70.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 239 Uptime: 43m wakeups: 1 Memory: 7.22 GiB used: 2.81 GiB (39.0%)
  Init: systemd v: 252 default: graphical tool: systemctl Compilers:
  gcc: 12.2.0 clang: 14.0.6 Packages: pm: dpkg pkgs: 0 pm: pacman pkgs: 1803
  libs: 496 tools: pamac,yay Shell: Zsh v: 5.9 default: Bash v: 5.1.16
  running-in: konsole inxi: 3.3.24

The output is missing. Can you show us this output?

On my EndeavourOS VM, pipewire is installed by default. It has pipewire-pulse and libpulse installed. On that system pipewire-pulse is required by “none”, but libpulse is required by Firefox, ffmpeg, etc. I would take a look at pipewire-pulse.

Name            : pipewire-pulse
Version         : 1:0.3.63-4
Description     : Low-latency audio/video router and processor - PulseAudio
                  replacement
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://pipewire.org
Licenses        : MIT
Groups          : None
Provides        : pulseaudio  pulseaudio-bluetooth
Depends On      : libavahi-client.so=3-64  libavahi-common.so=3-64
                  libglib-2.0.so=0-64  libpipewire-0.3.so=0-64
                  libpulse.so=0-64  pipewire-audio  pipewire-session-manager
Optional Deps   : None
Required By     : None
Optional For    : firefox  pavucontrol  pipewire
Conflicts With  : pulseaudio  pulseaudio-bluetooth
Replaces        : None
Installed Size  : 455.56 KiB
Packager        : Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) <heftig@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Tue 03 Jan 2023 05:37:37 PM EST
Install Date    : Wed 04 Jan 2023 01:40:05 PM EST
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : Yes
Validated By    : Signature

Name            : libpulse
Version         : 16.1-3
Description     : A featureful, general-purpose sound server (client library)
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/
Licenses        : LGPL
Groups          : None
Provides        : libpulse.so=0-64  libpulse-simple.so=0-64
                  libpulse-mainloop-glib.so=0-64
Depends On      : dbus  libasyncns  libcap  libxcb  libsm  libsndfile  systemd
Optional Deps   : glib2: mainloop integration [installed]
Required By     : ffmpeg  firefox  fluidsynth  gst-plugins-good  libcanberra
                  libopenmpt  pipewire-pulse  qt5-multimedia
                  xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin
Optional For    : alsa-plugins  mpg123  sdl2
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Installed Size  : 1549.51 KiB
Packager        : Evangelos Foutras <foutrelis@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Tue 01 Nov 2022 11:15:50 AM EDT
Install Date    : Tue 06 Dec 2022 08:02:40 PM EST
Install Reason  : Installed as a dependency for another package
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : Signature

I could be completely wrong about this as I don’t actually know, just speculating. If you have pipewire-pulse installed, then that provides pulseaudio. Many programs were only made to use Pulse (e.g. Plasma’s audio applet plasma-pa) and depend on pulseaudio to deal with audio even though it provides sound server-agnostic functionality. Pipewire then pretends to be Pulse in order to make these work. As a result, there could be a fake Pulse running on your computer that is actually just Pipewire?

Or I could be completely wrong. If I am please correct me.

That’s pretty much it, although I’m no expert either.

Details here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/Config-PulseAudio

As far as I know, the inxi output in the OP looks normal for people using pipewire as audio server.

Maybe the OP can check the output of:

$ pactl info

Metapackage manjaro-pipewire installs 2 pipewire packages to replace 3 pulseaudio packages:

  • pipewire-pulse replaces pulseaudio and pulseaudio-bluetooth
  • pipewire-alsa replaces pulseaudio-alsa

If pulseaudio has been removed, /usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service should be replaced by /usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire-pulse.service
and /usr/lib/systemd/user/pulseaudio.socket replaced by /usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire-pulse.socket

Here is the output:

Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native
Library Protocol Version: 35
Server Protocol Version: 35
Is Local: yes
Client Index: 265
Tile Size: 65472
User Name: snich
Host Name: snich-20369
Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.63)
Server Version: 15.0.0
Default Sample Specification: float32le 2ch 48000Hz
Default Channel Map: front-left,front-right
Default Sink: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_09.2.pro-output-0
Default Source: alsa_input.pci-0000_00_09.2.pro-input-0
Cookie: 77d7:3c77

Seems like it is. I was just worried, cos when I checked inxi I was surprised I have both PipeWire and PulseAudio running.

I rebooted after installing manjaro-pipewire. I don’t have the output anymore.

Looks fine.

Line 9

Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 0.3.63)

shows that it is indeed pulseaudio provided by pipewire that’s beeing used.

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