Paul, your negative style discourages me from replying to all your comments individually. I have a good reason for my stance, which I'll repeat.
The news item https://www.gentoo.org/support/news-items/2026-01-15-desktop-profile-pipewire.html seems to have happened because of these: https://bugs.gentoo.org/961764 https://bugs.gentoo.org/936101 https://bugs.gentoo.org/927245 The OP of 961764 gives the the Firefox issue as the only specific rationale for the change. If Firefox has no audio without PA/PW, enable it just there, not in everything. 936101 proposes enabling pipewire just because it's spread into multiple packages and PA is becoming obsolete. That is no reason to enable the flag for everyone by default. 927245 was started mostly becasue of the screencast flag. That is hardly needed by most people. The OP only mentions the pipewire flag on a side note and gives no specific reason for enabling it by default (only saying that it's spread into into more and more packages - again, that is no reason). None of that justifies imposing pipewire on everybody by default. Granted, I don't have the time to go through the whole mailinglist discussion and the bugreports. I'm afraid Gentoo is blindly jumping on the bandwagon of distros, which enable PA/PW unconditionally, but fail to understand how little PA/PW is actually needed. I've used Gentoo on desktops for decades - without PA or PW - and everything's always worked out of the box IIRC. I've used Firefox, too, though not in recent years, and it's always had audio by default. I use KDE and Kmix now. I haven't used screencasting (outside of videoconferencing), for instance, but that's an uncommon use case. PW is a big piece of software, it's a daemon, it spreads throughout the system when enabled. It's horrible. When I don't start it, things put errors into my journal (but sound works anyway). If you also tell me it's network-facing, I'll start screaming. Something as big and unnecessary as PW shouldn't be on by default for everybody. I implore the maintainers of the desktop profiles to first see if PA/PW is truly needed for the majority of users, then make the decision. Based on the three bugs mentioned, it seems like the news item and the change mainly happened because more and more software receives support for pipewire. That's no reason. -Roman On Sun, Mar 1, 2026 at 12:26 PM Paul Zander <[email protected]> wrote: > > Am 01.03.26 um 11:45 schrieb Roman Žilka: > > On Fri, Feb 27, 2026 at 2:11 AM Sam James <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Roman Žilka <[email protected]> writes: > >>> in bugs.gentoo.org/970029 I'm proposing making "pipewire" a global USE > >>> flag. It's found in multiple packages commonly present in desktop > >>> installations (incl. qtmultimedia, gnome-shell and libsdl[23]) and > >>> constitutes a well-defined piece of functionality. > >> You haven't outlined what that functionality is. > > The functionality is PipeWire, the audio (and video - didn't know > > that) processing daemon. That is the single, well-defined, isolated > > piece of functionality. The initial paragraphs of > > https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PipeWire sum it up in greater detail. > You should have read past the first paragraph. It's an ipc daemon for > media. It's a security feature as well. > >>> Pulseaudio, which > >>> serves a similar purpose, already has a global flag and making > >>> "pipewire" global as well would put it on equal footing. Moreover, the > >>> flag's position in use.desc will put the the option to get rid of the > >>> obnoxious daemon and its ecosystem on full display for those who see > >>> no point in pipewire (incl. myself). It's often on by default *sigh*. > >> I don't think this rant is appropriate (or useful) for the discussion. > > This is actually the primary reason for this proposal. I didn't open > > it just because the flag represents a well-defined function, but > > because I think it'll be useful for a lot of people. PA/PW are > > omnipresent for some reason, but unnecessary for a majority of audio > > use cases (having audio output and input, mixing of multiple sources, > > volume control, per-app volume control, output to any physical output, > > ...) and, of course, video use cases (very few people screencast > > outside of videoconferencing, which doesn't need PW). The USE flag > > will give people a visible, global off-switch for it. Those who want > > PW, of course, will receive a global on-switch for the desired > > function. > > The primary reason for this proposal is that you haven't read > https://www.gentoo.org/support/news-items/2026-01-15-desktop-profile-pipewire.html, > which gives you reasoning for all three USE-flags. > > So your uninformed view of the reasons isn't really a basis for a change > or discussion. > > >> Which of these packages in their USE is actually referring to PipeWire's > >> sound API (where it is a replacement for PulseAudio in that sense, but > >> upstream generally say you should use the pulse API), and where is it > >> actually screencasting (which should be USE=screencast), or something else? > > I don't know that. For a list of packages this long, I'm afraid I > > don't have the time to find out. While I understand it'd be ideal to > > have the flag split up into two if PW is used for two different > > purposes, it'll still be a step up just to have a global flag for all > > things PW. That is particularly true if you agree that few people > > actually need PW - any part of it. > > No one agrees on that. Read the news and take the outlined steps. > > >> 1) Defining a global USE flag involves giving a definition/description of > >> that flag > >> for use.desc. What description do you propose? > > "PipeWire, the sound and video processing daemon". Becuase I strongly > > oppose spamming use.desc with the likes of "Support for ...", "Enable > > ...", "Enable support for ...", "Add support for ...". > > > > By the way, there are these in use.desc now: > > pulseaudio - Add sound server support via media-libs/libpulse (may be > > PulseAudio or PipeWire) > > screencast - Enable support for remote desktop and screen cast using > > PipeWire > > > > I didn't investigate why the listed packages had USE=pipewire while > > these existed, but it's something to consider. Checked > > media-libs/libpulse briefly: its homepage is > > www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio, but I can't find a > > single mention of PW there. > > > > If the local flags "pipewire" don't get a global flag, but are > > transformed into "pulseaudio" or "screencast" instead, I'll be happy, > > too. > Any of these three flags becoming a global flag won't make local flags > disappear, especially if they are different from the global description. > >> 2) Are we sure that USE=pipewire does the same thing for all of these > >> packages? That's a requirement for it being a global USE flag. If it > >> does not currently do so, we either need to fix some of these uses, come > >> up with a generic description s.t. it's still useful as a global USE, or > >> abandon the global USE effort for this. > > Whatever happens, please make sure that PW doesn't get pulled into my > > system unless I explicitly enable it. Because I don't need it and, > > arguably, most people don't. In fact, if the default state of the > > individual local "pipewire" flags were off, I would never have made > > this proposal in the first place. It seems to me that the only package > > that's so closely tied to PW that it might make sense to have it on by > > default there is gui-apps/wf-recorder. > > What allows you to speak for most people? The fact that you read years > of support questions on this or your personal opinion? > > If you had read the news entry you would realize that these flags are > only enabled for desktop profiles. Which you need to explicitly select. > > >> 3) How many such packages are left after checking these where they may > >> indeed be USE=screencast candidates instead? Is it above the threshold > >> for a global USE flag? > > Again, if "pipewire" doesn't make it into use.desc, please turn it off > > by default (except for things like wf-recorder). > > Turn it off except where it's useful. As it's currently done? > > So no change required? > > > Cheers, > > Roman > > USE-flags exist. Use them. The flags profiles set are there so they fit > the need of most people. Not the need of someone who thinks everyone > should follow his spleen. > > If you need help configuring your system use one of the support channels > gentoo provides. [0] > > — > > [0] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Support > > >
