Pipewire setup nightmare and device not recognized

[Sojuzstudio (Mika K)]

I used AV Linux for several years and only moved temporarily to Ubuntu Studio after the previous release. At that time, my hardware was brand new and I began encountering graphics-related issues along with audio glitches. The audio instability persisted even after transitioning to Ubuntu Studio, although the graphics issues did not.

Since then, the system has received multiple BIOS updates. In retrospect, I believe the original problems were most likely related to early firmware/BIOS maturity rather than AV Linux itself.

Ubuntu Studio was always intended as a temporary solution. My plan has been to return to AV Linux, as I genuinely miss its efficiency and the level of optimization it provides out of the box — qualities that are difficult to replicate elsewhere.

I am now preparing to move back and expect the experience to be considerably smoother with the updated firmware.

Let’s see how it goes

[chiraag-nataraj (ಚಿರಾಗ್ ನಟರಾಜ್)]

@mhartzel

I must say I’ve had more luck with Arch - based distros than with Ubuntu. This of course depends on hardware one has.

That’s totally fair haha! It’s just that it feels like with Arch, you’re really supposed to know what you’re doing (which is not a bad thing!). Similarly to you, I’ve had far fewer problems with Debian sid than I had with Ubuntu, which is honestly hilarious to me.

[nodens]

Full disclosure: I’m a Debian developer so I might be (probably am) biased.

Just though I’d chime in case other people stumble on this post, or have issue (on Debian, I don’t know how it is in Ubuntu but the package in 24.04 will be older than the one on Debian 13 Trixie, even more so if using Debian backports)

Recently for music production I set up another system using Trixe (Debian 13), and I can tell:

• Pipewire is installed as default at least if you install Gnome or KDE Desktop environment.

• Documentation for setup is available, as customary in Debian, in /usr/share/doc/pipewire/README.Debian.gz (you can read it here as well, but beware that is the version worked on, which might not even be in Debian unstable yet. At the time of the writing it’s the same as in Trixie).

Pipewire-jack is optional, you can install it alongside with jack2d, but if you do, use pw-jack to run programs with pipewire jack compatibility layer, and setup jack as well (e.g with qjackctl). If you want to use pipewire jack unconditionally, you do have to copy the example files to ld.so.conf.d and run ldconfig as root, as stated in the README:

Using pipewire as a substitute for JACK
---------------------------------------

Install the pipewire-jack package.
JACK clients can be configured to output via pipewire instead of JACK.
To enable this:
* either run JACK clients using the pw-jack(1) wrapper, or copy
  /usr/share/doc/pipewire/examples/ld.so.conf.d/pipewire-jack-*.conf
  into /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ and run ldconfig as root.

Installing RT kernel is possible (but not mandatory) and may result in fewer xruns under load (it does on my setup)

In any case you should add your user to the pipewire group so that it can use the limits set up in /etc/security/limits.d/25-pw-rlimits.conf and make sure you’re running with the performance power profile, also set cpu governor to performance as well for all CPUs, especially if you use a low-energy cpu (this is not specific to Debian).

You can do it with sudo /usr/bin/cpupower -c all frequency-set -g performance (you’ll need linux-cpupower package), or install cpupower-gui for a graphical interface.

I also use backports for pipewire and kernel on my Trixie setup, they are regularly updated following the testing version.

edit: I agree that ideally, installing pipewire-jack should use a debconf question to ask if one wants pipewire jack compatibility layer active by default. I created a wishlist bug (#1128431) to suggest it to the pipewire maintainers.

HTH!