Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by smoldesu 1503 days ago
On the flip side, Linux audio supports things that MacOS and Windows do not. Do you have 990kbps LDAC running on your desktop? Probably not if you aren't on Android or Linux. With PipeWire, I feel pretty comfortable saying Linux has Mac and Windows beat with wireless audio compatibility. Yes, Pulseaudio/ALSA and Jack kinda suck. That's a pretty dead horse to beat when you consider the offerings on... other platforms.
1 comments
Godel_unicode 1503 days ago
Of course I do, I wanted to be sure for myself that the difference is inaudible on Windows like it is on Android. I bought an adapter which supports it and confirmed it was transmitting it, then did my a/b/x testing.

It sounds like you agree with me, the default Linux support for Bluetooth audio is bad and requires custom workarounds to fix. That's exactly what I said.

link
SSLy 1503 days ago
What workarounds are you talking about? Pipewire is stock in distros, and you don't have to configure anything.
link
Godel_unicode 1503 days ago
I'm not sure what you meant by "stock in distros", but I hope you don't mean it comes installed and configured out of the box on all distros, as that is emphatically not the case:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1399464/cant-install-pipewir...

https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-pipewire-on-ubuntu-li...

https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2022/04/pipewire-replac...

link
SSLy 1503 days ago
It is stock in Fedora, and it's the "driver" in Ubuntu just that apps are using ALSA/Pulse emulation libs, not the native ones. This has no effect on the BT support. Also, it's just Ubuntu being weird again.
link
Godel_unicode 1503 days ago
Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro. If Ubuntu requires workarounds to get audio working, then Linux requires workarounds to get audio working. No whatabouts, no "it just needs one quick thing", if it doesn't just work then it doesn't just work.
link
smoldesu 1502 days ago
PipeWire supersedes Pulseaudio. End of discussion. This position is like arguing that Windows 11 isn't the future because most people are still on Windows 10; it's most definitely wrong and relies on circumstance.

You really want to get pedantic? "Linux" isn't Ubuntu, nor is it Fedora nor Arch nor Debian or any of those distros. Linux is a kernel, and it supports several audio backends (or none at all). If we're comparing with Darwin/NT, neither of them "just work" with audio since none of them ship with it. If we're comparing OSes, then we're talking about Monterey vs Windows 11 vs Linux With The Latest Tech. Not Windows 10 just because more people use it. Not Monterey just because it was better.

That's a disadvantage for Linux in most respects since the new "solutions" for desktop Linux are pretty awful (Wayland, Flatpak, GTK4/Libadwaita, etc). Let it be known that desktop audio is not one of those issues anymore, though.

link
SSLy 1502 days ago
don't move the goalposts, commenter above was comparing situation to major desktop OSes, which require even more obscure stuff so they don't work even more than Linux "does"
link