libcamera VS pipewire

pi@rpi5:~ $ sudo apt show libcamera0.1 Package: libcamera0.1 Version: 0.1.0+rpt20231122-1 Priority: optional Section: libs Source: libcamera Maintainer: Serge Schneider Installed-Size: 1,755 kB Depends: libcamera-ipa, libatomic1 (>= 4.8), libc6 (>= 2.34), libdw1 (>= 0.158), libgcc-s1 (>= 3.5), libgnutls30 (>= 3.7.3), liblttng-ust1 (>= 2.13.0), libpisp1 (>= 1.0.2), libstdc++6 (>= 12), libudev1 (>= 183), libunwind8, libyaml-0-2 Breaks: libcamera0 Replaces: libcamera0 Homepage: https://libcamera.org/ Download-Size: 476 kB APT-Manual-Installed: no APT-Sources: http://archive.raspberrypi.com/debian bookworm/main armhf Packages Description: complex camera support library libcamera is a complex camera support library which handles low-level control of the camera devices, providing a unified higher-level programming interface to the applications.

Red Hat seems to be putting a lot more work into desktop Linux lately. They added extended lifecycle options to RHEL Workstation with RHEL 9, they've been doing a bunch of work on desktop Linux technologies (PipeWire, libcamera, HDR displays, etc.), and they've recently worked with AWS to launch a virtual desktop option in the cloud.

https://github.com/kbingham/libcamera

the libcamera stack moves all of that control loop stuff into linux userland, so you would think there are no secrets left

but the actual register writes to drive the ISP are still in the blob, and libcamera is just telling the blob how to tweak every knob in the hardware

it makes no sense why they have opened it up so much, yet still insist on keeping that last bit a secret

If you don't know what PipeWire is (I didn't), it's an audio-video handler - it replaces things like PulseAudio.

https://pipewire.org/

Damn, your "audio server" seems to disagree with you.

PipeWire is a server and user space API to deal with multimedia pipelines. This includes:

I installed and configured pipewire according to the instructions from the Debian website. And let me tell you, it solved all my problems. The sound quality is good enough for practice, latency is very low. Currently, I just mute my guitar in YS, turn on ToneLib, adjust the volume on the system mixer, and play.