DEV Community

Cover image for Switching to Pipewire-Opensuse[GUIDE]
Swastik Dwivedi
Swastik Dwivedi

Posted on

Switching to Pipewire-Opensuse[GUIDE]

I recently switched to pipewire on my Opensuse build and I'm loving it so far. I switched over to pipewire because it fixes a lot of pulseaudio issues which I've faced in the past. Pipewire is really new and still in the works and its more upto date for recent hardwares and bluetooth peripherals.

Automatic way

I've made a script which has does other stuff but has an option for switching to pipewire without much hassle. Clone it and run it and enter the correct option.

git clone https://github.com/drunckj/Asus-ESS
cd Asus-ESS/
./setupscript.sh
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Manual way

First we need to install all the necessary files

sudo zypper install pipewire pipewire-pulseaudio pipewire-alsa
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

It will show and errors about conflicts you should select option 1 to fix the issue which reads de-installation.
After doing so we successfully managed to install pipewire on our device.
Now we need to start pipewire and its sockets on boot.

systemctl --user enable --now pipewire.{service,socket}
systemctl --user enable --now pipewire-pulse.{service,socket}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

After running the above commands, you should reboot.
To check if pipewire is up and running, run the following command.

pactl info
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Look for server name in output. If it shows
Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire)
congratulations your pipewire is working.
If it still shows pulseaudio, look into troubleshooting.

Troubleshooting

Sometimes pipewire doesn't generate config files so we have to move them to the right location. This can cause the bluetooth to not work too. Follow the below steps for fixing it.

If your having errors check if the below directory exists

/etc/pipewire
~/.config/pipewire
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

If they don't exist, do the following and reboot and check again by running pactl info again.

sudo cp -r /usr/share/pipewire /etc/
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

The above command will move the config files to their default locations.

Top comments (0)