I’d have to disagree with that. It wasn’t perfect and there were issues for many people at the beginning, but it united everything properly.

Before then (in xmms days), don’t forget that audio in apps constantly didn’t work, and the sound servers often conflicted. It was far from a seamless experience.

But, pipewire I agree doesn’t seem to have any downsides and finally fixes from what I felt was the last major issue (low latency)