platform-notes-linux.qdoc

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// Copyright (C) 2024 The Qt Company Ltd.
// SPDX-License-Identifier: LicenseRef-Qt-Commercial OR GFDL-1.3-no-invariants-only
 
/*!
\page qtmultimedia-linux.html
\title Qt Multimedia on Linux
\brief Platform notes for Linux
 
This page discusses considerations for using Qt Multimedia on Linux.
 
\section1 Audio backend requirements
 
Qt Multimedia audio features on Linux require PipeWire or PulseAudio. PipeWire is the recommended
backend on all modern Linux distributions, but PulseAudio will be used if PipeWire is not available.
The experimental ALSA backend will be deprecated in future versions of Qt. Until then, community
contributions are required to fix issues with this backend.
 
For applications that use the GStreamer backend on embedded Linux, see
\l{Qt Multimedia GStreamer backend} for additional PulseAudio requirements.
 
\section1 Limitations on Linux using the Wayland compositor
 
The screen capture feature requires the installation of:
\list
    \li The \l {https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/doc-org.freedesktop.portal.ScreenCast.html}{ScreenCast}
        service supported via \l {https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/docs/}{XDG Desktop Portal}.
    \li \l {https://pipewire.org/}{PipeWire} (0.3).
\endlist
 
Due to restrictions of the Wayland protocol, the current screen can only be selected through
the wizard displayed by the operation system when \c QScreenCapture instance is activated.
For additional details, refer to the \l QScreenCapture class documentation.
 
\section1 Hardware encoding/decoding drivers
 
Hardware-accelerated video encoding and decoding on Linux requires platform-specific drivers. While
Qt Multimedia may fall back to software encoding/decoding if the necessary drivers are not available,
installing hardware support drivers can significantly improve performance and reduce CPU usage.
 
Install the appropriate driver package for your hardware:
 
\list
    \li \c intel-media-va-driver — Intel Gen 8+ (Broadwell 2014+), Arc A-series, and newer processors
    \li \c intel-media-va-driver-non-free — Intel media driver with additional proprietary codecs
    \li \c i965-va-driver — Older Intel hardware (Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell)
    \li \c mesa-va-drivers — VA-API support for AMD GPUs
    \li \c nvidia-driver — NVIDIA proprietary graphics driver (e.g., \c nvidia-driver-525 or later)
\endlist
 
*/