Title: Desktop Profile to enable PipeWire support
Author: Ian Jordan <[email protected]>
Posted: 2026-01-15
Revision: 4
News-Item-Format: 2.0
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/alpha/23.0/desktop
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Reasons
=======
Gentoo has had a longstanding complaint that desktop profiles do not
enable a suitable working audio setting, which causes confusion for
new users. An example of when this is a user can end up compiling
Firefox without audio support, meaning the user will have to add the
USE flags and then compile Firefox a second time. This not only wastes
time for the user, but also increases support workload by the volunteers
that provides it.
This change will make PipeWire the default sound server for all Gentoo
desktop profiles which support it, rather than just KDE Plasma profiles as
was the previous norm[1]. PipeWire has been widely adopted by Linux as a
whole due to its feature to work with older standards such as PulseAudio,
and means Gentoo will be less likely to need users to make any follow-up
changes to their system, related to audio.
Changes
=======
New global USE flags enabled: pulseaudio
-> Enables PulseAudio support for packages as a fallback when native
PipeWire isn't available.
New global USE flags enabled: pipewire
New package.use default: media-video/pipewire[sound-server]
-> These settings will enable PipeWire by default where available and
also tell PipeWire to act as our PulseAudio server where there is no
native PipeWire support.
New global USE flags enabled: screencast
-> In Wayland sessions, the video functionality of PipeWire is not only
used for screen sharing but also to take screenshots and recordings or
simply to cast window content onto task managers' window previews.
As this is basically a free and beneficial addition as it provides
things like screenshotting and webcam access under Wayland.
Alpha and HPPA
===============
Alpha and HPPA currently do not have PipeWire support enabled so only
PulseAudio is enabled.
These can be requested by users at a later date after confirming they work
with the respected projects.
Users not wishing to change
===========================
For users not wanting to change from the their current desktop profile
setup, then all that is required is to set
USE="-pipewire -pulseaudio -screencast"
in their make.conf file.
User Action Required
====================
In order to enact all changes:
emerge -avDU @world
Follow the post-installation messages printed by emerge to start the
needed daemons.
If using systemd, to configure the PipeWire daemon(s), run the following
commands:
$ systemctl --user --now disable pulseaudio.service pulseaudio.socket
$ systemctl --user --now disable pipewire-media-session.service
$ systemctl --user --now enable pipewire.socket pipewire-pulse.socket
$ systemctl --user --force enable wireplumber.service
OpenRC users don't need to take any action if using a desktop environment
that supports XDG autostart.
Afterwards all that should be required is a reboot, however in the unlikely
event of issues then check out how to configure PipeWire for your purposes.
[1][2].
In order to keep a previously configured PulseAudio only system (i.e. keep
using media-sound/pulseaudio-daemon), set
USE="-pipewire -screencast" in /etc/portage/make.conf
and
media-video/pipewire -sound-server in /etc/portage/package.use
For an ALSA only system, set
USE="-pipewire -pulseaudio -screencast" in /etc/portage/make.conf
[1] https://www.gentoo.org/support/news-items/2022-07-29-pipewire-sound-server.html
[2] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PipeWire
