PipeWire

PipeWire is a server for handling audio and video streams on Linux, designed to unify and replace PulseAudio (for consumer audio) and JACK (for professional audio) with a single, high-performance multimedia server. Initiated by Wim Taymans at Red Hat in 2015 and first released in 2021, PipeWire has become the default audio server on Fedora, Ubuntu, and other major Linux distributions. Key features include: unified audio and video handling (managing both audio devices and video capture devices like webcams in a single server), low-latency audio processing (achieving sub-10ms round-trip latency suitable for professional audio production, competing with JACK), PulseAudio compatibility (providing a drop-in PulseAudio replacement via pipewire-pulse, ensuring existing PulseAudio applications work without modification), JACK compatibility (providing a JACK replacement via pipewire-jack, with automatic client migration from JACK to PipeWire), ALSA compatibility (direct ALSA device access via pipewire-alsa for applications using the ALSA API), Bluetooth audio support (with A2DP, HFP, HSP, and LDAC codec support via WirePlumber session manager), Pro Audio profile (exposing raw ALSA devices for professional audio interfaces with minimal processing), video stream handling (managing screen sharing for Wayland compositors, webcam access, and video processing pipelines), per-client latency control (different clients can request different latency targets), session managers (WirePlumber as the default session manager, handling device discovery, profile selection, and routing), security (Flatpak and Snap integration for sandboxed applications via the portal system), and WebRTC integration (for browser-based video conferencing screen sharing).