The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the beta release of Ubuntu Studio 21.10, codenamed “Impish Indri”.

While this beta is reasonably free of any showstopper DVD build or installer bugs, you may find some bugs within. This image is, however, reasonably representative of what you will find when Ubuntu Studio 21.10 is released on October 21, 2021.

Please note: Due to the change in desktop environment, directly upgrading to Ubuntu Studio 21.10 from 20.04 LTS is not supported and will not be supported.  However, upgrades from Ubuntu Studio 21.04 will be supported. See the Release Notes for more information.

Images can be obtained from this link: https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/21.10/beta/

Full updated information is available in the Release Notes.

New Features

Ubuntu Studio 21.10 includes the new KDE Plasma 5.22 desktop environment. This is a beautiful and functional upgrade to previous versions, and we believe you will like it.

Studio Controls is upgraded to 2.2.3 and includes a frontend to qnetjack which allows Jack sources to/from the local network.

OBS Studio is upgraded to version 27 and works with Wayland sessions. While Wayland is not currently the default, it is available as unsupported and experimental.

We now use the Icon-Only Task Manager by default. You can change this by right-clicking on the taskbar/top panel and select “Show Alternatives…”.

There are many other improvements, too numerous to list here. We encourage you to take a look around the freely-downloadable ISO image.

Known Issues

Official Ubuntu Studio release notes can be found at https://ubuntustudio.org/ubuntu-studio-21-10-release-notes/

Further known issues, mostly pertaining to the desktop environment, can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ImpishIndri/ReleaseNotes/Kubuntu

Additionally, the main Ubuntu release notes contain more generic issues: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/impish-indri-release-notes/21951

Note of clarification: This release does not use the snapped Firefox browser. That will be changing for 22.04 LTS as required by Mozilla.

Please Test!

If you have some time, we’d love for you to join us in testing. Testing begins…. NOW!

The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the beta release of Ubuntu Studio 21.04, codenamed Hirsute Hippo.

While this beta is reasonably free of any showstopper DVD build or installer bugs, you may find some bugs within. This image is, however, reasonably representative of what you will find when Ubuntu Studio 21.04 is released on April 22, 2021.

Please note: Due to the change in desktop environment, directly upgrading to Ubuntu Studio 21.04 from 20.04 LTS is not supported and will not be supported.  However, upgrades from Ubuntu Studio 20.10 will be supported. See the Release Notes for more information.

Images can be obtained from this link: https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/21.04/beta/

Full updated information is available in the Release Notes.

New Features

Ubuntu Studio 20.04 includes the new KDE Plasma 5.21 desktop environment. This is a beautiful and functional upgrade to previous versions, and we believe you will like it.

Agordejo, a refined GUI frontend to New Session Manager, is now included by default. This uses the standardized session manager calls throughout the Linux Audio community to work with various audio tools.

Studio Controls is upgraded to 2.1.4 and includes a host of improvements and bug fixes.

BSEQuencer, Bshapr, Bslizr, and BChoppr are included as new plugins, among others.

QJackCtl has been upgraded to 0.9.1, and is a huge improvement. However, we still maintain that Jack should be started with Studio Controls for its features, but QJackCtl is a good patchbay and Jack system monitor.

There are many other improvements, too numerous to list here. We encourage you to take a look around the freely-downloadable ISO image.

Known Issues

Official Ubuntu Studio release notes can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HirsuteHippo/Beta/UbuntuStudio

Further known issues, mostly pertaining to the desktop environment, can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HirsuteHippo/ReleaseNotes/Kubuntu

Additionally, the main Ubuntu release notes contain more generic issues: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HirsuteHippo/ReleaseNotes

Please Test!

If you have some time, we’d love for you to join us in testing. Testing begins…. NOW!

The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the beta release of Ubuntu Studio 20.10, codenamed Groovy Gorilla.

While this beta is reasonably free of any showstopper DVD build or installer bugs, you may find some bugs within. This image is, however, reasonably representative of what you will find when Ubuntu Studio 20.10 is released on October 22, 2020.

Please note: Due to the change in desktop environment, directly upgrading to Ubuntu Studio 20.10 is not supported and will not be supported. See the Release Notes for more information.

Images can be obtained from this link: https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/20.10/beta/

Full updated information is available in the Release Notes.

New Features

Ubuntu Studio 20.10 is the first release of Ubuntu Studio to use the KDE Plasma Desktop Environment by default. This is a solid, stable desktop environment chosen due to its incredible customizability, low memory footprint, and many more reasons. The KDE community and Ubuntu Studio have a unique synergy in that they are both striving to be the choice of artists of all kinds, so this is an ideal development relationship going forward.

Jack Mixer has returned and is installed by default.

Studio Controls has succeeded Ubuntu Studio Controls and is now an upstream project available for all distributions, also included in Fedora Jam 33 Beta by default.

New Session Manager, the continuation/fork of Non Session Manager, is included by default.

Known Issues

Official Ubuntu Studio release notes can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GroovyGorilla/Beta/UbuntuStudio

Further known issues, mostly pertaining to the desktop environment, can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GroovyGorilla/ReleaseNotes/Kubuntu

Additionally, the main Ubuntu release notes contain more generic issues: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GroovyGorilla/ReleaseNotes

Please Test!

If you have some time, we’d love for you to join us in testing. Testing begins…. NOW!

The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the beta release of Ubuntu Studio 19.10, codenamed Eoan Ermine.

While this beta is reasonably free of any showstopper CD build or installer bugs, you may find some bugs within. This image is, however, reasonably representative of what you will find when Ubuntu Studio 19.10 is released on October 17, 2019.

Images can be obtained from this link:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/19.10/beta/

New Features

In terms of new features, Ubuntu Studio 19.10 will include several audio plugins previously not included: over 90 new plugins courtesy of the Linux Studio Plugins project and quite a few from the DISTRHO Plugins Framework.

Another major new feature is the inclusion of OBS Studio by default, allowing users to get up-and-running with recording and live streaming out-of-the-box. OBS Studio also includes Jack integration, allowing interfacing with DAWs such as Ardour or using an audio plugin host such as Carla.

With the LADI tools and LADI Session Handler being abandoned, we have removed those tools and replaced them with Raysession, which is a lightweight session handler fully compatible with the NON Session Manager API, meaning many tools already installed are supported. User feedback has shown that Raysession, paired with Carla, is superior to the session management previously done by LADISH.

Ubuntu Studio Controls has been updated with a plethora of new features, including an indicator showing the state of Jack, the ability to select other audio backends besides ALSA, the addition of more than one PulseAudio bridge, improvements to USB audio handling, the addition of button shortcuts to various audio tools,

Known Issues

Official Ubuntu Studio release notes can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EoanErmine/ReleaseNotes/UbuntuStudio

Further known issues, mostly pertaining to the desktop environment, can be found at https://wiki.xubuntu.org/releases/19.10/release-notes

Additionally, the main Ubuntu release notes contain more generic issues: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EoanErmine/ReleaseNotes

The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the beta release of Ubuntu Studio 19.04, codenamed Disco Dingo.

While this beta is reasonably free of any showstopper CD build or installer bugs, you may find some bugs within. This image is, however, reasonably representative of what you will find when Ubuntu Studio 19.04 is released on April 18, 2019.

New Features

In terms of new features, Ubuntu Studio 19.04 will include a new version of the Ubuntu Studio Metapackage Installer, renamed to Ubuntu Studio Installer. This package is used to add features you may have opted-out of during installation. With this release, Ubuntu Studio can now be installed on top of a default Ubuntu installation or any flavor thereof such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Budgie, or Ubuntu Kylin. Documentation on this feature is coming soon.

Another major new feature is the addition of the upcoming Carla 2.0, originally from the KXStudio project. Carla is an audio plugin host and graphical patchbay which can be used as an audio plugin itself, and also can be used as a bridge to use VST plugins compiled for Windows using WINE. Please note that this WINE bridge is not installed by default, but is available in the Ubuntu repositories.

With the addition of Carla, jack-rack has been removed from the default installation for obsolescence reasons, and because Carla duplicates its functionality.

Also included are new GTK and icon themes which modernize the look and feel of Ubuntu Studio.

Known Issues

There is a known bug with the installer. Due to the new theme, there are occurrences of black text on a dark gray background. We intend to fix this before 19.04 is released. (Bug #1822134)

Official Ubuntu Studio release notes can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DiscoDingo/ReleaseNotes/UbuntuStudio

Further known issues, mostly pertaining to the desktop environment, can be found at https://wiki.xubuntu.org/releases/19.04/release-notes

Additionally, the main Ubuntu release notes contain more generic issues: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DiscoDingo/ReleaseNotes

Installing Ubuntu Studio 19.04 Beta

To upgrade to Ubuntu Studio 19.04 Beta, follow these instructions:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DiscoUpgrades

The Ubuntu Studio 19.04 Beta images can be downloaded at:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/disco/beta/