Manjaro KDE + pipewire - How to make things work again?

Pipewire is a new multimedia framework that is replacing pulseaudio.

However, we have been having problems using pipewire with Manjaro KDE…

I - The standard KDE audio volume control is no longer available;
II - We no longer have the audio configuration options (hardware) in the “System Settings”;
III - When we add a new audio device (a bluetooth headset, for example) it does not start to be used automatically by the OS;
IV - The keyboard features/keys for audio control have stopped working.

According to some sources, KDE is not ready to integrate with pipewire…

QUESTION: Any way we can make Manjaro KDE have the features mentioned in items I, II, III and IV back?

NOTE: I believe that many people are having problems with pipewire in Manjaro KDE. If there is still no solution, does anyone have information about actions that are being taken to solve the problems pointed out? @Manjaro-Team

Thanks! =D

[Refs.: Manjaro KDE - After the last update replaces pulseaudio with pipewire, no more audio volume controls , KDE sound settings miss pulse-audio module "module-gsettings" (#771) · Issues · PipeWire / pipewire · GitLab , 433246 – Pipewire is missing pulseaudio modules , After switching to pipewire, KDE audio settings complain that "module-gsettings" is needed , PipeWire - ArchWiki , PipeWire, the media service transforming the Linux multimedia landscape ]

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It’s just a matter of installing it right - how did you do it? If you removed pulseaudio and its dependencies before installing the replacement then everything will break. AFAIK the right way to go about it is using pamac and installing manjaro-pipewire, it will take care of not removing wrong things.

To solve I, II and IV install plasma-pa again.
III I assume is caused by Pipewire itself, the thing in the audio settings is grayed out for me.

According to some sources, KDE is not ready to integrate with pipewire…

Yep, AFAIK nothing’s been done in that direction (beyond Wayland streaming support of course). It’s not really necessary just yet though because of pipewire-pulse

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Pipewire replacing PulseAudio was not a decision made by Manjaro
Users who had Pulseeffects installed would have been asked to remove PulseAudio,
because the Pulseeffects developer changed the dependencies to require the change

One of the Manjaro Team recently quoted one of my posts about using PulseAudio
and a post from another user about using Pipewire
Failed update due to pulseaudio dependencies - #2 by bogdancovaciu

One of the early posts after the update had this expert opinion
PulseEffects issues with Pipewire - #4 by mr_glitch
And that discussion also has later posts by another user about use of Pipewire on KDE

If the KDE volume controls are not working correctly, you could try installing pavucontrol-qt
I have also seen comments that pamixer works with pipewire

One thing I was not aware of in previous discussions about pipewire is that there is more than one systemd service. I only found out 2 days ago that there is a pipewire-pulse.service in addition to pipewire.service

So on your system, if you check the systemd units

systemctl --user list-unit-files | grep pipewire

You should see this if both services are active

pipewire-pulse.service                                       disabled  enabled      
pipewire.service                                             disabled  enabled      
pipewire-pulse.socket                                        enabled   enabled      
pipewire.socket                                              enabled   enabled      
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This is very true, but the internet is full of mismatched information (see references), which is why in another post of mine I wrote…

It would also be nice to hear them (Manjaro Team).

Precisely to be able to know what was happening and to be able to help others too. :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush:

So knowing what decision the Manjaro Team made - If this was the case - I would decide what I should do. Use “pulseaudio” or “pipewire”.

Thank you very much for all the information and clarifications! As soon as possible I will give you feedback. :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush:

I am an enthusiast of the Manjaro project (particularly with the KDE gui). So I try to be as participative as possible in the forums and try to make other people’s lives easier. I have also been helped a lot.

That is the spirit of free software! Thanks again! :muscle:

This was the output I got …

[eduardolac@eduardolac-pc ~]$ systemctl --user list-unit-files | grep pipewire
pipewire-pulse.service                                                               disabled  enabled       
pipewire.service                                                                     enabled   enabled       
pipewire-pulse.socket                                                                enabled   enabled       
pipewire.socket                                                                      enabled   enabled

In view of this…

[…] For Manjaro? I guess for a long time it will be pulseaudio. Pipwire is in testing stage, and like you can read in project wiki at the moment it’s only to play around not for daily/production use. It’s from what I’ve understood. […]
PulseEffects issues with Pipewire - #4 by mr_glitch

… and this…

[…] PulseAudio is still the default audio server on Manjaro and Pipewire is still a beta project […]
Failed update due to pulseaudio dependencies - #2 by bogdancovaciu

It seems to me that the best solution for now is to go back to using “pulseaudio”.

I have two machines: one with PulseEffects installed and one without. First one got a request for replacement while the second one didn’t. So I think it’s not our decision to replace PA with PW at all.

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I have seen the topics created related to a term called pipewire - and I have not paid attention to them - signed off as -

I don’t use it - I don’t even know what it is

But after a couple of pings from users (the broad team mention) I checked my system - a purely window manager and pulseaudio - no pulseeffects - and I have no pipewire packages.

After checking the ISO profiles - none of them has pipewire or pulseeffects as a part of the ISO.

pipewire is not mandatory :exclamation:
The decision to use pipewire is a user decision - because the user has chosen to install pulseeffects - and pulseeffects 5.x has hard dependency on pipewire.

Manjaro pipewire FUD

All the comments on Manjaro making a change without being ready - is FUD - it is members throwing around statements with no hold in fact. So for those saying Manjaro changed to pipewire - please do your homework.

pulseaudio replaced with pipewire

This will happen if you have installed pulseeffects as part of your specific user setup.

Upstream pulseeffects has replaced pulseaudio with pipewire - and that has nothing to do with Manjaro but a design choice made by the developers of pulseeffects.

If you want pulseeffects but want no pipewire - for one reason or another - you can’t have pulseeffects in the latest pulseeffects package has a hard dependency on pipewire.

It will also happen on KDE because upstream KDE as decided to make pipewire a hard dependency of the kwin window manager.

Keep pulseaudio with pulseeffects

To keep pulseaudio with pulseeffects - you need resort to pulseeffects-legacy package if you require the content of pulseeffects.

Summary

pipewire is a hard dependency on latest pulseeffects 5.x so if want to update the pulseeffects packge then you will get pipewire - otherwise not.

You can also replace pulseaudio with pipewire - again this is a user decision.

Manjaro ISO - in their present state - does not install pipewire nor pulseeffects.

I stand corrected by @pixel - thank you.

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Well this is exactly what I tried to say. Maybe this should be noted somewhere (if not already) as an announcement or FAQ that PulseEffects requires PipeWire now

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Sorry if I misread your comment - maybe language barrier :wink: . I read that depending on pulseeffects installed - pulseaudio is replaced with pipewire.

So I didn’t want to quote out of context - which is why I used your complete comment - but my reference was actually this

which confused me as I understood this as not a user decision after all - but it is a user decision - but if you explicitly want to keep pulseaudio - manual intervention is needed to replace pulseeffects with pulseeffects-legacy.

I think this is a good idea - also something for the wiki.

  • pulseeffects 4.x → pulseaudio
  • pulseeffects 5.x → pipewire

On my system I just replaced pulseaudio with pipewire - rebooted the system - no hickups - the existing pavucontrol and paprefs picked up pipewire without problems.

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Is Pulseeffect installed by default on any of the official editions?

I was talking from the name of Manjaro Team :grinning:

There is no edition - official or community - which installs pulseeffects - I ran a grep on the iso-profiles folder. But of course I cannot know if there is a hidden dependency - somewhere - but no profiles mentions neither pulseeffects nor pipewire.

I stand corrected by @pixel - thank you.

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So we can conclude installing pulseeffects was a user decision, so the user should keep up with the dependency changes of his applications. :slight_smile:

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It has been mentioned in a lot of recent posts
and it has also been mentioned that Manjaro also now has pulseffects-legacy in community repository that still depends on PulseAudio

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Now I understand - I have edited my comment to reflect this POV - thank you and accept my apology for not understanding immediately the POV.

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The developer of Pulseeffects had intended to make this change for a long time
[Feature Request] Adding support to Pipewire? · Issue #397 · wwmm/pulseeffects · GitHub

But IMO there should have been plenty of time to change the package name and description to reflect the change of audio server

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Why would the package name require changes, if upstream has not changed the software name?

And the package description reads:

Which, to me, is a clear indication, that it’s for Pipewire.

The description was not changed in the first version of Pulseeffects requiring Pipewire

My question would be why would the developer not change the name?

That’s an issue the Arch package maintainer would know about. :slight_smile:

Again, a question for the developer. It’s not something Manjaro has any control over.

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I am not sure if I understand the context correctly but pipewire is a dependancy for kwin.

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