For Ubuntu Planet Posts
Our favorite Disco Dingo, Ubuntu Studio 19.04, has reached end-of-life and will no longer receive any updates. If you have not yet upgraded, please do so now or forever lose the ability to upgrade!
Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS is scheduled for April of 2020. The transition from 19.10 to 20.04 will be relatively smooth, so at this time we are recommending all new installations to be 19.10.
Ubuntu Studio has had the same website design for nearly 9 years. Today, that changed.
We were approached by Shinta from Playmain, asking if they could contribute to the project by designing a new website theme for us. Today, after months of correspondence and collaboration, we are proud to unveil this new, modern site made with open source software available in Ubuntu Studio.
Feel free to explore. We plan on updating some screenshots in the coming weeks, but for now, we just want to show-off the amazing work that the folks at Playmain have done.
If you need a theme for your wordpress site, we highly recommend Playmain. Their work is second-to-none, and they are proud users of Ubuntu Studio and love the open source community.
Ubuntu Studio 19.04 was released on April 18, 2019. As a non-LTS release, 19.04 has a 9-month support cycle, and, as such, the support period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu Studio 19.04 will reach end of life on Thursday, January 23, 2020.
The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu Studio 19.04 is via Ubuntu Studio 19.10. Instructions and caveats for the upgrade may be found at:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EoanUpgrades
If you’re still running Ubuntu Studio 19.04 (Disco Dingo) you need to upgrade to 19.10 as soon as possible in order to continue receiving updates. Failure to upgrade to Ubuntu Studio 19.10 from 19.04 may result in the inability to upgrade at all or require using difficult upgrading techniques.
We would like to thank those of you who have participated in the Ubuntu Studio Telegram Groups over the past year. While it has been productive, we decided that it would be best to sunset our Telegram bridge to our IRC channels, thereby dropping Telegram from our official support and community channels.
We have a few reasons for this:
We will be transitioning the Telegram groups out before 7:00pm US Pacific Time on January 12, 2020.
However, we don’t wish to remove one method of easy access without replacing it. As such, we are introducing Matrix as an official support channel.
Matrix is a messaging platform similar to IRC. The reason this acts better is because it can be accessed from a web interface or desktop client, and each individual user in Matrix shows up in IRC and vice-versa.
The Matrix rooms are available as follows:
The Matrix bridges are available now.
This question seems to be coming up quite frequently:
“Will Ubuntu Studio 20.04 be a Long-Term Support release?”
We are writing this post to answer this question which is a definitive YES unless otherwise posted, meaning circumstances would have to drastically change at this point to make it non-LTS.
It seems as though the non-LTS status of 18.04 caused a lot of shock and has people now, nearly two years later, questioning the viability of Ubuntu Studio as a whole and whether or not it even has a future.
If it didn’t have a future, 19.04 and 19.10 wouldn’t have had releases, since we went through a bit of a crisis in March of 2019. However, those issues were mitigated and Ubuntu Studio is stronger than ever, with our leader Erich Eickmeyer having upload permissions on select Ubuntu Studio-specific packages (and now doing packaging on new multimedia items in Ubuntu that aren’t in Debian), our Debian Developer Ross Gammon having upload permissions on the Ubuntu Studio Package Set, and Ubuntu Core Developer Thomas Ward who has upload privileges to the entire Ubuntu archive. This is a position we were not in two years ago, but we are now.
Additionally, we have the entire support and backing of the Ubuntu community as a whole, the community council, and the technical board. Remember, and this cannot be stressed enough: Ubuntu Studio is Ubuntu. It’s not separate from Ubuntu, nor will it ever be separate.
In other news, we have a new website coming, so stick around for that.
Additionally, improvements to Ubuntu Studio Controls will be a big thing for 20.04 LTS, as will a few additional audio/instrument plugins. Mostly, what we’re working on is polish of what already exists in 19.10, so don’t expect 20.04 LTS to be drastically different.
Hopefully this helps those of you who don’t know what’s going on to now be “in the know” and to stave-off any rumors that Ubuntu Studio is dying, because it’s not. It’s in a great position now, and we hope it remains that way for many years to come.
Right now our biggest need is in support. We need more people monitoring the ubuntu-studio tag on askubuntu.com and answering questions there. This will require you to register, but askubuntu is the preferred method of support.
Additionally, we need people in the Ubuntu Studio IRC channel (#ubuntustudio on freenode) to hang out and help others while keeping the topic on support. If you wish to go off-topic (meaning in this context non-support), we have a channel for that too (#ubuntustudio-offtopic on freenode).
Thank you to the entire Ubuntu Studio community!
The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu Studio 19.10, code-named “Eoan Ermine”. This marks Ubuntu Studio’s 26th release. This release is a regular release and as such, it is supported for 9 months.
For those requiring longer-term support, we encourage you to install Ubuntu Studio 18.04 “Bionic Beaver” and add the Ubuntu Studio Backports PPA, which will keep 18.04 supported through April 2021.
Since it’s just out, you may experience some issues, so you might want to wait a bit before upgrading. Please see the release notes for a complete list of changes and known issues.
OBS Studio is now included by default, making Ubuntu Studio the first-ever operating system ready for live streaming and video recording out-of-the-box.
We realize that OBS Studio 24 has already been released, however we only include version 23 since by the time version 24 was released, the deadlines for inclusion in the Ubuntu repositories had already passed. As such, if you require a newer version, the OBS Project does have a PPA. If you choose to add this PPA, please note that neither the Ubuntu Studio nor any other Ubuntu team can support it.
Adding nearly 100 audio plugins to Ubuntu Studio, we now include plugins from the Linux Studio Plugins project and the Distrho Plugins Framework. You will find these plugins in LADSPA, LV2, and VST formats.
To replace the abandoned LADI Session Handler, we opted to adopt RaySession, a Qt-based audio application session handler API-compatible with Non Session Manager. This already supports a large number of applications that are already installed by default, and, per user feedback, provides superior session handling than the old LADI tools when paired with Carla.
Ubuntu Studio Controls version 1.11.3 is included in this release, and provides numerous improvements:
Ufraw has been removed from the repositories as development ceased in 2015, and it is incompatible with the current version of Gimp. For those affected, we suggest you find a new workflow for working with RAW images. Applications we suggest include RawTherapee and DarkTable.
Ubuntu Studio is maintained by a very small team and we are actively seeking new contributors. We are looking for developers, packagers and testers. Even if you are interested in contributing outside these areas, please do not hesitate to reach out. Your contribution is precious regardless of your field of activity. We are open to volunteers with all expertise levels. Just head over to our contribute page to find out how to get started.
Taking the time to report bugs makes a huge difference; it’s the first step towards improvement! Clear and specific bug reports is the best way to get attention to a problem that needs fixing. The easiest way to create a bug report is with the terminal.
Open one up and type: ubuntu-bug <package>
Read more about this at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs
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/
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,
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
As of today, July 18, 2019, Ubuntu Studio 18.10 has reached the end of its support cycle.
We strongly urge all users of 18.10 to upgrade to Ubuntu Studio 19.04 for support through January 2020 and then after the release of Ubuntu Studio 19.10, codenamed Eoan Ermine, in October 2019 which will also be supported for 9 months.
Ubuntu Studio 18.10 will no longer receive any support from this point forward. Packages will not be updated any further, and packages in the Ubuntu Studio Backports PPA for 18.10 will be removed if they haven’t been already. Additionally, if you have added the backports PPA, it is highly recommended that you remove the PPA prior to upgrading using the instructions in this link.
By now you may have seen Ubuntu’s blog post (Statement on 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS) and saw that it mentions Ubuntu Studio as being one of the catalysts behind the change-of-plans. You may also be wondering why Ubuntu Studio would be concerned with this.
While we did cease building 32-bit i386 ISO images a year ago, we still were counting on backward compatibility with 32-bit software, namely when it comes to audio plugins.
One of the biggest features of Carla being in the repositories is that it allows a WINE Bridge for Windows-based VST plugins, the vast majority of which are still compiled in 32-bit. Without 32-bit support, this feature is dead. This makes converting to Ubuntu Studio from Windows especially hard on those who rely on Windows VST plugins, the vast majority for which there is no Linux alternative. If this WINE bridge were to disappear, so would a large part of our user base. This would be a large part of professional recording studios and artists that would rather not be running Windows.
Additionally, any native Linux audio plugins compiled in 32-bit and brought-in from 3rd party sources would also no longer work (Carla provides a bridge for these, too). Audio plugins included in Ubuntu Studio and the repositories would not be affected.
However, the eventuality is that 32-bit software will eventually have to disappear. So, we urge you to contact the publisher/developer of whatever 32-bit plugin you rely on and urge the publisher/developer of that plugin to begin to compile their plugins in 64-bit.
We hope this brings clarity as to what Ubuntu Studio had to do with this decision. Thank you for using Ubuntu Studio, and we hope this keeps our community alive for years to come.
We hope that Ubuntu Studio 19.04’s release has been a welcome update for our users. As such, we are continuing our work on Ubuntu Studio with our next release scheduled for October 17, 2019, codenamed “Eoan Ermine”.
A bug identified in which the ALSA-Jack MIDI bridge was not surviving a reboot was fixed and updated in Ubuntu 19.04. As such, please make sure all of your packages are up-to-date.
We have already done a lot of work to Ubuntu Studio Controls for 19.10, and as such we have several new features already landing:
These features are currently available in Eoan Ermine’s daily ISO images. After we have determined there has been sufficient testing (or 19.10 is released, whichever comes first), we will backport this version of Ubuntu Studio Controls to our backports PPA.
The Linux Studio Plugins Project is a collection of 91 Ladspa, LV2, and VST audio plugins compatible with Carla, Ardour, and other DAWs. These plugins are to be included by default in Ubuntu Studio 19.10, and are currently available in the Backports PPA for 18.04, 18.10, and 19.04. If you feel as though Ubuntu Studio is lacking in audio plugins, this should no longer be the case.
For a full list of plugins available, check out the official documentation.
If you have not already upgraded from Ubuntu Studio 18.10 to 19.04, you have just over a month left to do so before Ubuntu Studio 18.10 reaches End-Of-Life and will no longer be supported. Ubuntu 18.10 and all official flavors reach End-Of-Life on July 18, 2019. Mark your calendar and upgrade as soon as possible!
Upgrading is available via the Software Updater and the command line “do-release-upgrade” tool.
If you have added the Backports PPA, please install and run ppa-purge tool before upgrading for the best upgrade experience:
sudo apt install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntustudio-ppa/backports
