Ubuntu 22.10 Kinetic Kudu daily builds are coming with Pipewire, instead of Pulseaudio out of the box. Pipewire was initially launched by Wim Taymans in 2015. It was initially designed for video and expanded to audio streams later on. The last time Ubuntu made a major change in its audio stack was in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. Fedora and other popular distros adopted Pipewire in 2021.
Wayland compatibility
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS comes with Pipewire and PulseAudio installed on the image. However, Pipewire was only used for the video for Wayland compatibility.
Users could make Pipewire a default audio server in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS but it was a tricky process. Now that Canonical decided to switch to Pipewire, it will be easier for users to use Pipewire as an audio server easily. Pipewire’s support for modern Bluetooth audio equipment works better than PulseAudio. Some other benefits of Pipewire are better hardware compatibility, less resource usage, and its modern codebase.