Pipewire as default for audio in Zorin 18?

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1

If Zorin 18 is going to based on Ubuntu 25 does that mean we'll also finally have pipewire instead of pulse by default?

2

The current trend implies that Zorin OS 18 will be based on LTS Ubuntu 24.04.

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3

Yes and no. As Aravisian said, ZorinOS 18 will be based on Ubuntu 24.04, not 25.04. But, from what I could find, "Ubuntu uses PipeWire as replacement of PulseAudio for its default sound server since Ubuntu 23.04", so yes, unless the zoringroup intentionally reverts this change, ZorinOS 18 should use pipewire.

4

Oh yeah, I forgot Zorin 17 was based on Ubuntu 22.04 not 24.04. Thanks for the info! I installed pipewire already but honestly I'm not entirely sure it's installed correctly. All of my audio works but sometimes it acts a little weird.

5

Pulse Audio works for me, give it a try!

Pulse Audio Volume Control Output
Pulse Audio Volume Control Output3886×2206 354 KB

Startreker Signature
Startreker Signature700×342 112 KB

6

I had Pipewire installed since Zorin 17.1, since the 17.3 update however I get weird audio glitches which never happened before. EG playing music file, video file or on browser it'll play fine for 10-15 minutes then suddenly go all metallic and garbled. Sometimes switching to a different tab or player will play normally and restore the original audio when I resume play, sometimes it needs a reboot.

I prefer Pipewire since I found 'EasyEffects' which greatly enhances audio playback on my notebook. NB I've removed this for now to test if it was the source of the glitching.

I am about to install 17.3 fresh on a new SSD, so will leave it 'as factory' to test for a while. If I had a vote, it would go to Pipewire I think.

7

@NeilW Is it perhaps due to a setting in the energy-saving mode? This is often set to 15 minutes. I still have problems with the network connection suddenly being disconnected while watching movies in the browser, for example. In Linux this is often a problem that
the system does not recognize video playback and music playback correctly and thinks you are inactive and therefore switches off services. I can only solve it by increasing the time span for the screen saver and suspend.

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8

Thanks! Not something I had considered. I'll keep a look out for that in the new install, which I'm doing anyway so as to have separate SSDs for Zorin and Windows.