How to use Wayland and PipeWire in Nitrux

Update 01/01/23: Please note that the information below is aimed at an old release of this distribution and does not pertain to the current release.

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Wayland and PipeWire are poised to be the future of Linux display and audio servers, respectively. Today’s tutorial will check how to use Wayland and PipeWire in Nitrux.

Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆

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Installing extra PipeWire packages

By default, Nitrux includes some PipeWire packages (pipewire and pipewire-bin), so we will add more packages necessary for PipeWire work.

• First, update the package index and check package upgrades.
• Second, we need to update the package nitrux-repositories-config. The latest version is 1.0.7+dfsg; see fig. 1.
  • • This upgrade will be valid only for Nitrux 2.2.0 and below, or if you haven’t upgraded your installation, skip this step if you’re using the latest release of Nitrux.
• Third, we install the rest of the PipeWire packages we need.

pkcon refresh && get-updates
pkcon install nitrux-repositories-config
pkcon install gstreamer1.0-pipewire libpipewire-0.3-{0,common,modules} libspa-0.2-{bluetooth,jack,modules} pipewire{,-{alsa,bin,jack,pulse,v4l2}} wireplumber

Now that we have updated and installed the necessary packages, we need to disable the PulseAudio service with OpenRC. To do this, run the following command.

sudo rc-update del pulseaudio-enable-autospawn default

We can reboot to stop using PulseAudio at this point.

Enabling audio in PipeWire

After installing the packages, we need to add a file to the following path ‘/etc/security/limits.d/‘ in the format ‘username.conf’; for example, the username in my VM is nx so that the file is called ‘nx.conf’.

Use sudo micro to create and edit the file.

sudo micro /etc/security/limits.d/nx.conf

Below is the content of the file; replace the username accordingly.

nx  soft    memlock 64
nx  hard    memlock 128

Then, create a group called pipewire and add your user.

sudo groupadd pipewire
sudo usermod -a -G pipewire nx

Reboot.

Next, we need to start PipeWire and Wireplumber using our users. To do this, we need to create a shell script, and to autostart the script, go to System Settings>Startup and Shutdown.

#! /bin/zsh

set -x

# -- Start PipeWire processes

for process in pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber 
    do nohup $process & 
done

# -- Download sample file to test with aplay

audio_sample=$HOME/.local/share/sounds/pop1.wav

if [[ ! -f $audio_sample ]]; then
    echo "File not found! Downloading..." 2>&1
    mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/share/sounds"
    axel -a -q -o "$HOME/.local/share/sounds/pop1.wav" -n 10 https://www.pachd.com/sfx/pop1.wav
    else
        echo "File found! Do nothing..."
fi

# -- Reproduce sound to make PipeWire work

for device in default sysdefault pipewire
    do nohup aplay -D $device $audio_sample &
done

Then make the script executable. I called the script autostart-pipewire and moved it to a path in the $PATH. When the script runs, you will hear a pop sound, meaning PipeWire is outputting audio.

chmod +x autostart-pipewire
sudo mv autostart-pipewire /usr/bin

To test audio manually, use a WAV file for ease of use. The script above will run an automated test using a small sample file.

• Test first with the default device, then with pipewire.
  • Note: For an unknown reason, using aplay -D pipewire BEFORE aplay -D default or sysdefault or simply testing a file without doing so will result in no audio. Run aplay -D default or sysdefault FIRST.

aplay -D default /path/to/audio.wav
aplay -D sysdefault /path/to/audio.wav
aplay -D pipewire /path/to/audio.wav

For further testing, try Firefox and a YouTube video.

We can check the audio server in use with the following command; see fig. 2.

pactl info

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Installing a Wayland session

Let’s move now to installing Wayland and Plasma Wayland. To do this, run the following command.

pkcon install nx-desktop-wayland-legacy plasma-workspace-wayland

Then log out and select Plasma (Wayland) in the SDDM dropdown menu and log in.

That’s it; this concludes today’s tutorial.