When you have SDDM installed, a script called you emerge the pipewire package, a file called /etc/xdg/autostart/pipewire.desktop is installed with the following contents: $ cat /etc/xdg/autostart/pipewire.desktop [Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Name[de]=PipeWire Mediensystem Name=PipeWire Media System Comment[de]=Das PipeWire Mediensystem starten Comment=Start the PipeWire Media System Exec=/usr/bin/gentoo-pipewire-launcher Terminal=false Type=Application X-GNOME-HiddenUnderSystemd=true X-KDE-HiddenUnderSystemd=true X-systemd-skip=true This looks like it's supposed to start gentoo-pipewire-launcher when you log in, but it doesn't do that for me. I'm using dwl with an autostart patch, so I have to put gentoo-pipewire-launcher in dwl to get audio working. The pipewire wiki page states the following: "Gentoo's PipeWire package now installs the needed autostart files to /etc/xdg/autostart/pipewire.desktop, so no action should be required." I think this isn't true as far as I know.
Not all DEs/WMs respect XDG autostart. The wiki page makes clear that if your DE doesn't, you will need to find some way to start it yourself?
The wiki page was ambiguous: i gather the intent of listing particular display managers in the section heading was to simply provide examples of what a 'display manager' is, rather than to specify DMs where "no action should be required", but the latter reading is certainly reasonable. Based on the comment at https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8721563.html#8721563, i've just updated the wiki page to note that SDDM does not make use of autostart files, alongside some more general phrasing changes.
