Pipewire does more then just audio, it can handle video stuff, and that is what its being used for in this case On Mon, Aug 2, 2021, 12:43 AM Javier via arch-general < arch-general@lists.archlinux.org> wrote:

Hello !

I do understand pipewire is required on wayland to be able to share the desktop. Is its audio component required as well for desktop sharing on wayland? I'm talking future wise, and mainly about some applications which allows audio and video conferencing as well as desktop sharing, like zoom, slack and perhaps webrtc. If its audio component is not required, is it possible at all to let pipewire without its audio components? Would it be enough to avoid installing its alsa and pulse plugins? Any additional configuration required?

I have avoided using pulse, and I really don't want to use pipewire audio component either. I might have to use pipewire if moving to wayland in the future for whatever reason. I have hybrid used cases for audio. On the desktop of course, but also headless, since I also left boxes playing music without anyone logged in (I log in, make mpd play a list, and log out), and I times go back and forth from being logged in and logged out, and not necessarily I log to the desktop, just console or ssh connections might be enough to start playing music on mpd. Plain alsa does great for these hybrid use model. There are as well other non common gnu+linux midi frameworks which do well, like sndio, but pulse-audio and pipewire don't.

Thanks !

-- Javier