Thanks Dale :)

Title: Desktop Profile to enable PipeWire support
Author: Ian Jordan <[email protected]>
Posted: 2025-09-06
Revision: 3
News-Item-Format: 2.0
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Reasons
=======

Following on from enabling support for Pipewire in the Plasma profiles,
this change enables Pipewire for all desktop profiles.
As the way we output sound has changed dramatically in the years
since using wireless or often several devices, dynamically connected and
shared between multiple systems, a modern desktop environment is expected to
handle this effortlessly by default.

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.

Changes
=======

New global USE flags enabled: pipewire, pulseaudio, screencast
New package.use default: media-video/pipewire[sound-server]

We want broad sound server support in packages, and these settings will make
PipeWire act as our PulseAudio server where there is no native PipeWire support.

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.

Users not Wishing to Change
===========================

For users not wanting to change from the their current 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 -1avUD @world
    Check out how to configure PipeWire for your purpose [1][2]

In order to keep a PulseAudio or ALSA-only setup:

    Invert above new USE flag settings as needed, see also [2].

[1] https://www.gentoo.org/support/news-items/2022-07-29-pipewire-sound-server.
html 
<https://www.gentoo.org/support/news-items/2022-07-29-pipewire-sound-server.html>
[2] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PipeWire

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