I had a question from a user regarding sound in SwayBang and I replied telling them that I did not see sound as a priority live.
Only the thought kept on going around in my head what would be needed to have sound live? Already knew pipewire, pipewire-pulse and wireplumber are included on live iso image.
What do I need to get sound working live? Unlike Alsa of days long gone where I simply unmuted channels things are a little more complex with pipewire.
First issue that I had not even thought of until I started diving into this was dbus-user-session needs to be running.
That can be done from .bash_profile before starting sway, one thing off the list!
For pipewire systemd needs services run/started as user, again not a big problem but things would start to get messy running services every time you log in.
So I had a plan! Linking services during iso build meant that even after an install pipewire services would be active… YAY
Unless you have some weird sound card or need for certain driver firmware sound should be running live.
For me I tested using a combination of Pragha, libmad and cmus.
In Firefox you tube should also work, again given your hardware and a working network connection.
If you thinking of playing movies off shiny discs or have some weird media format then you will be disappointed.
If you have a working network connection then I will leave it up to user to install what they need to play/watch or stream.
Archlinux for most part will work offline but you are sorely limited in what you can do. Given a working connection then Pacman and of course AUR are at your fingertips.
This is what has always and still does amaze me about running live, the fact that you run pretty much anything without installing anything to a local drive.
Ok so it will be gone when you shutdown but never forget archiso supports persistence!!!!!!
Feel free to contact me if you need any help or advice on using SwayBang.
Please support my work by visiting Donations page on this site, it all helps to keep project alive and moving forwards with extra features like these.
Stay safe 😉