Ubuntu Studio 12.04.2 LTS
Ubuntu Studio is the Ubuntu flavour designed for content creation.
It’s produced as a DVD image that can also be converted to an USB stick and includes support for most languages by default.
Ubuntu Studio 12.04 LTS is a 3 year Long Term Support release and will be supported until April 2015.
Due to overwhelming improvements during this development cycle, the Ubuntu Studio Team is very proud and excited to have users experience Ubuntu Studio 12.04 LTS and provide feedback. We look forward to hearing from you.
New features in 12.04 include:
- Live-DVD
- GUI-based installation
- lowlatency kernel installed by default
- lowlatency-pae kernel installed by default in i386
- XFCE is default desktop environment
- Pulse Audio <-> JACK bridging enabled by default
- New theme, icons, and default font
- New LightDM and Desktop background/backdrop images
- Documented work flows/new application choices provide better user support
- Menu restructured for better work flow support
- ARandR included for improved multi-monitor functionality
- mudita24 replaces envycontrol24 for ice1712 chip audio interfaces
- Long Term Support release (3 years)
Ubuntu Studio Applications
This cycle we focused on developing work flows based on user tasks. This should give a more complete, functional, and robust application tool chain for users to create content. Please note that not all work flows listed in the wiki are directly supported in a default installation.
Notable applications for audio/video/graphic/photography work flows include:
- JACK – lowlatency and flexible routing sound server
- Ardour – multitrack digital audio workstation
- qtractor – multitrack audio recorder and sequencer
- LADSPA/LV2 – audio plugins
- OpenShot – easy to use video editor
- Blender – 3D modeler and incredible video editor/compositor
- GIMP – powerful pixel-based image editor
- Inkscape – scalable vector graphics editor/creator
- Darktable – RAW digital photograph editor
Common desktop applications saw changes as well:
- gedit – text editor
- Ristretto – image viewer
- Firefox – internet browser
- Transmission – bittorrent client
- XChat – IRC client
- Audacious – audio player
- Totem – movie player
- Brasero – disc burner
Common Infrastructure
- Up until Ubuntu 11.10, administrator access using the sudo tool was granted via the “admin” Unix group. In Ubuntu 12.04, administrator access will be granted via the “sudo” group. This makes Ubuntu more consistent with the upstream implementation and Debian. For compatibility purposes, the “admin” group will continue to provide sudo/administrator access in 12.04.
- Hibernate (suspend to disk) has been disabled by default, as it was found to be unreliable, very slow and confusing to have two suspend modes. See bug 812394 for details. If you want to re-enable it, please follow this recipe.
- pm-utils now has two new scripts to power down USB and various PCI devices in battery mode. A number of desktop packages were fixed to wake up less often. Both of these reduce power consumption and thus improve battery lifetime.
- resolvconf is now used to manage /etc/resolv.conf on all Ubuntu systems. You can learn more here
- Backports are now more easily accessible — to enable users to more easily receive new versions of software, the Ubuntu Backports repository is now enabled by default. Packages from backports will not be installed by default — they must explicitly be selected in package management software. However, once installed, packages from backports will automatically be upgraded to newer versions.
- DVD Images — the DVD images have been cleaned up significantly reducing their size to around 1.9GB to ease consumption. The remaining software remains available via download.
Ubuntu Kernel 3.2.0-37.37
By default, Ubuntu Studio 12.04.2 LTS will ship with a newer 3.2.0-37.37 kernel. This is based on the 3.2.37 Upstream Linux Kernel.
Upstart 1.5
Upstart has been updated to version 1.5. More details are available in the Upstart Technical Overview.
GNU Toolchain
Ubuntu 12.04 is distributed with a default toolchain that includes: GCC 4.6.3 (and changes from Linaro GCC 4.6-2012.02), binutils 2.22, eglibc 2.15, and Linaro gdb 7.4-2012.04.
Compared to the 11.10 release the toolchain did see only incremental changes and bug fixes; comparing to the 10.04 LTS release, GCC updates include
- Updated frontends for better standards support (Ada 2012, Objective-C 2.0, improved experimental support for the upcoming C++0x ISO C++ standard, Fortran 2003 and 2008 improvements, new Go frontend)
- Improved optimizations, including better inter-procedural optimizations, and link time optimization (LTO).
Further information can be found upstream (GCC-4.6, GCC-4.5, binutils, gas, ld, gdb).
Python Toolchain
Ubuntu 12.04 includes Python 2.7.3 and Python 3.2.3 Python 2.6 is no longer available for install.
There is expanded support for Python 3 in this release, with Python 3 ports of python-dbus, python-feedparser, germinate, lazr.ui, wadllib, python-defer, python-keyring, and python-qt4 now included, among others.
Java Toolchain
The default run time for Java is OpenJDK 6b24 (IcedTea 1.11.1). OpenJDK 7u3 (IcedTea 2.1) is available in the archive as well.
Installation
Overview
Preparing your computer for Ubuntu Studio is now much simpler, with a wider range of disk setup options. Each of these are detailed at length to provide you with a clear understanding of the actions that will take place with your selection.
You can now reinstall or upgrade an existing copy of Ubuntu Studio with the Ubuntu Studio DVD installer, provided that your computer is connected to the Internet.
Download
Ubuntu Studio 12.04.2 images can be downloaded from:
System Requirements
The minimum memory requirement for Ubuntu Studio 12.04.2 is 512 MB of memory. It is highly recommended that you have 2GB or more memory though so that the system will perform much better. More information about other recommended hardware on the new Ubuntu Studio website when it is released.
Upgrading
Upgrading from Ubuntu Studio 11.10
To upgrade from Ubuntu Studio 11.10, press Alt+F2 and type in “update-manager” (without the quotes) into the command box. Update Manager should open up and display following message: “New distribution release ‘12.04’ is available. Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions”.
Upgrading from Ubuntu Studio 10.04 LTS to Ubuntu Studio 12.04 LTS
It is recommended that users perform a complete instal rather than upgrade from Ubuntu Studio 10.04 LTS due to extent of the changes, including desktop environments.
Upgrading from Other Releases
Users of other Ubuntu Studio releases need to upgrade first to 11.10, and then to 12.04.
For further information on upgrading to 11.10, please see the Ubuntu Oneiric upgrade instructions.
Known Issues
Graphics and Display
Applications
Boot, Installation and Post-Installation
- Importing of existing Windows user accounts fails in some cases. (987902)
- Wubi (the Ubuntu installer for Windows) is not available as an option on the Ubuntu Desktop/DVD any more. Instead, it is now a separate download.
- Some Lenovo systems are unable to boot unsigned kernels in UEFI mode with Secure Boot enabled. (1087501)
- Sometimes enters failsafe-x mode when booting into Live Session in virtualbox with i386, yet booting from failsafe-x just freezes system. Workaround is to use amd64. (Bug: 1124660)
Upgrades
- If you have overridden the value of APT::Cache-Limit in /etc/apt/apt.conf or /etc/apt/apt.conf.d, you should remove these settings before upgrading. The release-upgrader-apt used by update-manager for upgrades from lucid to precise no longer has any hard coded limit on the cache size.
- Aptitude does not work on 64-bit systems without disabling multiarch in /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch . (831768)
- If you are running a KVM host with libvirt and are upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to 12.04 LTS you may find that some existing virtual machines are no longer recognized (virsh list –all). A change to each guest’s XML file may be needed, related to how console and serial devices are now configured. (931350)
Kernel
- On ARM omap images, the networking support for the Beagle XM board is broken (838200)
- On systems with an ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card the system will boot to a black screen. As a work around edit the kernel command line in the boot loader and add “nomodeset”. (725580)
- Fujitsu Siemens Amilo M 7400 and Maxdata 7000DX wireless RF kill handling triggers a kernel panic preventing wireless from operating correctly. This may be worked around by editing your kernel command line and adding “noexec=off”. (979253)
- Beagle XM systems which are capable of running at 1GHZ will be initialised at 800MHZ leading to slower than optimal performance. (771537)
- Some EFI systems fail to boot in EFI mode. BIOS mode is advised in these situations. (721576)
Support
- Ubuntu Studio 12.04 LTS is a Long Term Support release with 3-year support
- Security and bugfix updates for Ubuntu Studio are provided by the Ubuntu Studio Team and Community
- “Point releases” will also be provided at the same time as Ubuntu’s, offering refreshed installation medias
- Support via email can be found at the Ubuntu Studio Users Mailing List.
- Support via IRC can be found in the #ubuntustudio channel on the freenode network
