I learnt something important about Linux audio last night.

I noticed that I had no sound in X-Plane 12 (a flight simulator) while also being in a Discord call in Firefox. Apparently, certain FMOD applications check if PulseAudio is installed and fall back to ALSA if it isn't. Now, I have PipeWire installed to fix the mess that is Linux audio once and for all. So TECHNICALLY PulseAudio is not installed. And that's exactly what X-Plane detected, which then tried to gain complete control over the sound hardware through ALSA, which it couldn't.

The "fix" was to symlink `/bin/pulseaudio` to `/bin/true` to make it look like PulseAudio is available which tricked X-Plane into going through PulseAudio (and therefore through PipeWire) instead.

That was one of the weirdest problems I've ever encountered.

#linux #audio #xplane #xplane12 #discord #firefox #alsa #pulseaudio #pipewire #fmod #flightsim

Big thanks to Sakamoto for stepping up to maintain the #Firewire subsystem for the #Linux kernel.
I still use an #RME #Fireface800 and it works super well with the #ALSA driver he wrote using #pipewire.

I hope even post 2029 someone will be up for maintaining it as the devices are solid and using them on Linux is a great countermeasure against their planned obsolescence.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Firewire-New-Maintainer

Linux Has A New Firewire IEEE-1394 Maintainer - Intends To Maintain Support To 2029

It's likely been years since many of you have heard of Firewire and some readers likely never had the opportunity to use it

^{www.phoronix.com}