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.
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 DesktopEnvironment 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.
For those of you using the Ubuntu Studio Backports Repository, we recently had a major update of some tools. If you’ve been using the Backports PPA, you may have noticed some breakage when updating via normal means.
To update if you have the Backports PPA enabled, make sure to do the following:
sudo apt update sudo apt full-upgrade
“Full Upgrade” removes and installs certain items to make this update work.
Here’s what has been updated:
Ubuntu Studio Controls is now known as Studio Controls and is updated to version 2.0. As such, ubuntustudio-controls is now a dummy transition package to get you to the new version.
Ubuntu Studio Installer, since it depends on Ubuntu Studio Controls, is updated to depend on Studio Controls instead.
LSP Plugins are now based on the upstream version in Debian to cut-down on Ubuntu Studio dev workload. This has a slightly different package structure and may cause errors when trying to update via the standard “sudo apt upgrade” method.
Additionally, the Ardour Backports have been updated to Ardour 6.2, so if you’re using the Ardour Backports PPA, you should be upgraded to that as well.
Thanks for your understanding, and we apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused if you tried the standard PPA upgrade method and experienced errors.
Ubuntu Studio 19.10 (Eoan Ermine) was released October 17, 2019 and will reach End of Life on Friday, July 17, 2020. This means that after that date there will be no further security updates or bugfixes released. We highly recommend that you update to 20.04 LTS immediately if you are still running 19.10.
After July 17th, the only supported release of Ubuntu Studio will be 20.04 LTS. All other releases of Ubuntu Studio will be considered unsupported, and will no longer receive any further updates from the Ubuntu Studio team.
Our friends at Ardour have released Version 6.0, and we would like to offer them a huge congratulations! While the source code and their own builds were available on release day, many of you have been waiting for Ardour 6.0 to come to Ubuntu’s repositories.
Today, that day came. Ardour 6.0 has landed in Ubuntu Groovy Gorilla (future 20.10) and will be on Ubuntu Studio’s daily spins of Groovy Gorilla within 24 hours of this writing.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to backport Ardour 6.0 into Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, nor would we want to. This is because if we do, we might disrupt the workflow of people who are currently working with projects in 5.12 that are relying on its functionality and sound. Ardour 6.0 has an all-new Digital Sound Processor (DSP), and as such it may sound somewhat different.
Additionally, Ardour 6.0 projects are not backwards-compatible with Ardour 5.12 projects; once a 5.12 project is opened in 6.0, it is converted to a 6.0 project and cannot be used in 5.12 again unless restored from a backup.
This is also the reason why we will not be releasing Ardour 6.0 into Ubuntu Studio’s main Backports PPA. However, we are giving Ardour its own Backports PPA so that users may upgrade Ardour in their Ubuntu (Studio) 20.04 LTS installation whenever they are ready.
To upgrade Ardour to 6.0, open a terminal and type the following:
With our release announcement for Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS, we revealed that it would be our last version with the Xfce desktop, and that we would be moving to the KDE Plasma desktop starting with 20.10. Interestingly enough, that news took nearly two weeks to get noticed. When it did, it hit big.
In the release announcement, we talked about the reason for our decision. One of those was resource usage being comparable. On a fresh boot of the 20.04 LTS Live Image with Xfce, Ubuntu Studio was using approximately 620MB of RAM. On a fresh boot of the 20.10 Daily Live Image with KDE Plasma, Ubuntu Studio was using approximately 670MB of RAM. That ~50MB difference is extremely negligible, especially if you are running a machine with higher RAM availability. For reference, Ubuntu Studio is created for more powerful computers, is not meant to run on low-powered or older hardware, and is not meant to give an old computer new life. For that reason, from our perspective, the RAM usage between the two desktops is nearly the same.
Right now, the transition is nearly complete, with a few minor things regarding theme selection still in progress. We are staying with the same theme (Materia, this one being the KDE port), and the same icons (Papirus).
Here are a couple of screenshots to compare:
Among some of the things still needed to be worked-on to get this right include the installer. The Qt version of the Ubuntu Ubiquity installer (the one that installs the operating system, not to be confused with Ubuntu Studio Installer) is currently hard-coded to show Kubuntu branding. Either this will be fixed or we will be moving to a new installer. As said in the release announcement, we will be coordinating with the Kubuntu team on this transition as situations like this were anticipated.
We do hope that this “new” Ubuntu Studio will be an enjoyable experience.
The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu Studio 20.04, code-named “Focal Fossa”. This marks Ubuntu Studio’s 27th release. This release is a Long-Term Support release and as such, it is supported for 3 years (until April 2023).
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.
You can download Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS from our download page.
Upgrading
Please note that those running Ubuntu Studio 19.10 will likely not receive an upgrade notification right away. This may take anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks. Since 19.10 reaches End Of Life in July, please upgrade as soon as possible.
Those running Ubuntu Studio 18.04 can also upgrade, but will likely not receive any upgrade notification until 20.04.1 is released in July. Please note that you should purge the Ubuntu Studio Backports PPA prior to upgrade. Since 18.04 was not an LTS release, please upgrade as soon as possible.
With the release of version 2.0 of MyPaint, the library conflict with GIMP no longer exists. As such, MyPaint has retruned to our default installation. This is a welcome re-inclusion for our graphics design community, and has been a long-requested feature. MyPaint, welcome back!
AVLDrums
Available as an LV2 plugin, AVLDrums is now included with the default installation of Ubuntu Studio. AVLDrums is a drumkit plugin which can be used in conjunction with MIDI in any DAW that supports LV2 plugins, such as Ardour.
Ubuntu Studio Controls
Our flagship audio control application, Ubuntu Studio Controls, got a large update this release. Among the new changes:
Audio setup tab is split into three tabs: Jack Master Settings, Extra Devices, Pulse Bridging
Firewire devices are no longer available under Ubuntu Studio Controls unless they work with ALSA. Consider upgrading to a modern USB or PCIe audio interface to take advantage of everything Ubuntu Studio Controls has to offer.
PulseAudio bridges can now be named by the user
Libreoffice Impress
One item that has been requested is the inclusion of Libreoffice Impress, which was missing in releases past. We now include it by default to help those who need it for making presentations.
Other Changes
Most of this release is evolutionary on top of 19.10 rather than revolutionary. As such, most of the applications contained are simply upgraded versions. Details on key packages can be found in the release notes.
We have followed Xubuntu’s lead on a few desktop packages and replaced them. GNOME Calculator has been replaced with MATE Calculator, FileRoller has been replaced with Engrampa, and Evince has been replaced with Atril.
Unfortunately, we did have to say goodbye to some applications that people rely on due to library incompatibilities. Most notably, Python 2 has reached End-Of-Life, and many packages that depend on Python 2 simply have not been upgraded to Python 3. Those packages are as follows:
DisplayCAL
The author needs to upgrade this package to Python 3. Once it’s upgraded, we will include it in the Ubuntu Studio Backports PPA.
Patchage
The author has already patched this for Python 3, but relies on a newer version of another library not yet included in Ubuntu. We may be able to add this package and its library to the Ubuntu Studio Backports PPA at a later date.
In the meantime, use the Patchbay functionality in Carla.
GMidiMonitor
This project appears to be dead upstream and relies on Python 2.
We have replaced it with midisnoop, which is functionally equivallent.
For a more complete list of changes, please see the release notes.
Backports PPA
Packages already exist in the Ubuntu Studio Backports PPA for 20.04 for items that could not make it into the official Ubuntu repositories in time for release. These items include:
dragonfly-reverb 3.0.0
lsp-plugins 1.1.19
The above have also been backported to 19.10 and 18.04, along with many packages that did make it to the official Ubuntu repositories. However, as of today, the packages for 18.04 in the backports PPA will be frozen. If 18.04 users wish to receive further updates, please upgrade to 20.04 as soon as possible.
Instructions for enabling the Ubuntu Studio Backports PPA
Unlike other flavors of Ubuntu, Ubuntu Studio isn’t based on its desktop environment. We strive to look for the best experience for all of our users, which includes more than just audio.
About two years ago, we decided to try to release a second version of Ubuntu Studio with the KDE Plasma desktop environment. Unfortunately, that proved to be too time-consuming as we’d essentially have to be introducing a new flavor of Ubuntu, subject to the same application process as other new flavors. Knowing it would be too much for our small team, we decided to drop that idea and, with Ubuntu Studio Installer, make it so that other flavors could have Ubuntu Studio as a bolt-on, which enabled users to choose their desktop environment themselves.
Ubuntu Studio Installer isn’t going away, but we did reach a decision that does affect the future of Ubuntu Studio.
Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS will be the final release of Ubuntu Studio using the Xfce Desktop Environment. As such, upgrades from Ubuntu Studio 20.04 to later releases may result in breakage.
Future versions of Ubuntu Studio, beginning with 20.10, will be using the KDE Plasma Desktop Environment by default. Plasma has proven to have better tools for graphics artists and photographers, as can be seen in Gwenview, Krita, and even the file manager Dolphin. Additionally, it has Wacom tablet support better than any other desktop environment.
It has become so good that the majority of the Ubuntu Studio team is now using Kubuntu with Ubuntu Studio added-on via Ubuntu Studio Installer as their daily driver. With so many of us using Plasma, the timing just seems right to focus on a transition to Plasma with our next release.
For audio production, nothing in terms of resource usage changes. If the display compositor proves to be problematic, a simple alt-shift-F12 disables the display compositor. It can also be disabled from starting at login. A known resource hog from KDE, the Akonadi server in the KDE Personal Information manager, will not be included by default (Kubuntu currently does not use KDE PIM, but Thunderbird as do we). The Plasma desktop environment has, without Akonadi, become just as light in resource usage as Xfce, perhaps even lighter. Other audio-focused Linux distributions, such as Fedora Jam and KXStudio, have historically used the KDE Plasma desktop environment and done well with audio.
We will be working with the Kubuntu project on these changes, and the Lubuntu project as they have already cut the path ahead of us in changing desktop environments.
We look forward to working with the Kubuntu and KDE teams on this transition, and are excited to be joining the KDE community.
Evaluation of Included Applications
During this transition to Plasma, we will be evaluating our included applications to see if there is any duplication going on. Some have pointed out that there is duplication of application purpose. For example, we include 3 video editors by default: Pitivi, OpenShot, and Kdenlive, and each may have features the other does not have. We will be doing a lot of evaluation like that over the course of the next release cycle.
More details on all of this will emerge in the coming months. Please stay tuned to our website, our Twitter feed, and Mastodon for updates.
A Personal message from the Project Leader
The rest of this announcement is a personal message from our project leader, Erich Eickmeyer
This release represents the culmination of two years of hard work by the Ubuntu Studio team. This release is much more revolutionary than was released for 18.04 when I first started leading this project. We have come a long way since then, when a group of burnt-out developers were rallied into making a great product.
I would very much like to thank the following volunteers who made this release happen:
Len Ovens: Ubuntu Studio Controls, Ubuntu Studio Installer, Coding
Len has become my right-hand with this, and though we have disagreements about things, we have a common goal: making audio production on Linux easy, affordable, and ready for everyone with little to configure.
Thomas Ward: Packaging, Ubuntu Core Developer for Ubuntu Studio, Code Cleanup
I’d say Thomas is my other right-hand, but I don’t have two right hands, so Thomas gets to be my left hand. When I have questions about Ubuntu policy, or need a new package sponsored and uploaded, Thomas is my guy. He has been absolutely instrumental with Ubuntu Studio, and is someone I can genuinely call a friend.
Eylul Dogruel: Artwork, Graphics Design, Website Lead
Eylul has been amazing to work with. She had a bit of a hiatus over the past couple years, but that was completely understandable. We have many VOIP discussions about the future of the project, and it’s great having her perspective as a graphics designer. She has become a great friend, even though she lives halfway across the globe from me.
Ross Gammon: Upstream Debian Developer, Guidance, Sage Wisdom
Ross does most of his work upstream with Debian project, making sure our upstream has functioning code for us to use. He always keeps Ubuntu Studio in mind when working on packages in Debian, even taking some of my packaging in Ubuntu to use. He is someone I have historically gone to when I have questions about packages, and, when there’s a huge update in Debian, is my go-to for getting that package synced to Ubuntu.
Steven Jay Cohen: Reddit moderator, perhaps more soon!
Steven is a recent example of someone who uses Ubuntu Studio actively in a recording studio. He came wanting to get involved with the project and proved to be very engaging on Reddit. I have already seen plenty of potential in Steven when it comes to community and communication, so I’m looking forward to working with him more.
Krytarik Raido: IRC Moderator, Mailing List Moderator
Although we share some of these responsibilities now, Krytarik has been very instrumental in keeping the IRC room and mailing lists clean of spam. I’m very thankful for his help over the years.
Set Hallstrom: Previous Ubuntu Studio Leader
Shortly after taking a lead role for Ubuntu Studio back in 2016, Set had to step back. However, even though he was unable to lead the project, the transition to handing the project over was smooth and accomplished in the course of the past two years. Without Set’s guidance, I wouldn’t have known where to begin.
Other help along the way, including some key players:
Steve Langasek
Adam Conrad
Simon Quigley
Chris Cooper
Matthias Klassen
Filipe Coelho
Robin Gareus
David Runge
Olivier Humbert
Mattieu Trudel-LaPierre
Ian Lane
Łukasz Zemczak
Colin Watson
William Grant
Rik Mills
Valorie Zimmerman
Sean Davis
Unit193
And anyone else I missed!
Success Stories
Over the past two years I have come in contact with many people who have used Ubuntu Studio as part of their professional environments. I’d like to highlight a few here.
I mentioned Steven Jay Cohen above, who recently converted all of his recording studio machines over to Ubuntu Studio and uses them for his professional audio production.
Another person I’d like to point out is Mike Holstein, who uses Ubuntu Studio for his production environment. Here’s a track from him produced entirely with Ubuntu Studio:
Last but not least we have the band Lorenzo’s Music, who uses Ubuntu Studio to record and produce their music, develop their artwork, and even produce their music videos. They recently released a new EP entitled Spaghetti Mid-Western. I highly recommend checking-out their music.
Conclusion
Finally, I want to thank the entire Ubuntu Studio community for being with us through the past two years. It hasn’t been easy, especially since we couldn’t release 18.04 as a long-term support release. I’m humbled to be leading this project, and I believe it has a bright future.
The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the beta release of Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS, codenamed Focal Fossa.
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 20.04 LTS is released on April 23, 2020.
In terms of new features, Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS builds on the foundation of Ubuntu Studio 19.10, including a few new audio plugins to already compliment its large collection of audio plugins for audio production purposes.
Graphics artists will be happy to see the return of MyPaint. Due to a library conflict, MyPaint could not be installed simultaneously with Gimp 2.10. As such, MyPaint was removed. The latest version of MyPaint does not have that conflict and was returned to Ubuntu Studio’s defualt installation.
Ubuntu Studio Controls has been updated and now includes the ability to assign names to pulseaudio-Jack bridges. Additionally, the interface was simplified and organized across multiple tabs in order to shrink the interface to a reasonable size.
Ubuntu Studio 20.04 will be Ubuntu Studio’s first LTS release in four years. While we are working hard on the final polish for this, our 27th release, we would like to enlist your help with testing.
On April 2nd, we will be releasing Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS Beta. This comes with some fixes for Ubuntu Studio Controls: our flagship audio configuration software that makes using Ubuntu Studio for professional audio so easy. Additionally, it builds on the already-solid foundation seen in Ubuntu Studio 19.10, with some polish and newer versions of included software.
Between April 2nd and April 23rd, our efforts will be focused on testing before the final release. Since this is an LTS release, which will be supported for 3 years, we want to get as much testing done as possible.
From April 2nd to April 8th, we will be joining the other Official Ubuntu Flavors in an “Ubuntu Testing Week” where we encourage everyone, including YOU, to download the daily ISO image and try it out. You can do this now, but we are emphasizing the week of April 2nd to April 8th since that’s our beta release week.
Please test applications you regularly use so we can identify bugs and regressions. The earlier we catch them, the less likely they’ll end up in the final release.
New ISO files are built every day, so always use the most up-to-date ISO file. If you already have a daily ISO and are running any official flavor of Ubuntu, make sure you have zsync installed, open a terminal in the directory where your iso exists and type “zsync http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/dvd/current/focal-dvd-amd64.iso.zsync”. This will update your ISO to the latest build.
If you do find a bug, the easiest way to report the bug is to open a terminal (CTRL-ALT-T) and type “ubuntu-bug {name}”, where {name} is the name of the application in which you experience the bug. This will automatically upload error logs to Launchpad. If the bug is in the installer, the package name is “ubiquity”. Additionally, log the bug in the ISO tracker with your results.
Speaking of Ubiquity, there is a known bug in which, if one deselects even an individual package during the package selection screen, the install can fail and/or packages will be unintentionally removed. For the purposes of this test, please do not deselect packages at this time.
If you have some more time to spare, feel free to help test Ubuntu and the other Ubuntu flavors: Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, and Xubuntu. We’re all a big family, and would love as many testers across flavors as possible!
In technology, you hear the term “support” thrown around a lot. There are multiple definitions of that word. Here, we will focus on two
Development and Maintenance
The first one is related to development and maintenance. This is where the Ubuntu Studio development team comes in. That scope is rather limited since most of the software included in Ubuntu Studio isn’t maintained or packaged by the development team, but rather other teams within Debian and Ubuntu. This includes the lowlatency kernel, which is maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team, and the desktop environment, which is maintained by the Xubuntu team.
This support also deals with the length of time of the maintenance and upkeep of said components. For LTS releases it’s 3 years; for standard releases it’s 9 months.
Technical Support
This deals with something the community (this means you) currently should be doing but is not. This is an area that the developers cannot be doing, otherwise they would be working on Ubuntu Studio full-time. Currently, there are NO paid staff of Ubuntu Studio. Therefore, to keep from burning-out the development team, they will not be handling support requests, but will be glad to provide guidance to those who do.
Providing technical support is as easy as helping each other out on askubuntu.com or on the IRC/Matrix chatroom. We have #ubuntustudio (Matrix: Ubuntu Studio Support) for helping each other out, and #ubuntustudio-offopic (Matrix: Ubuntu Studio Cafe) for casual conversation. Please stay on-topic: i.e. no support conversation in the offtopic (Cafe) room and no offtopic (non-support) in the main (support) room.
Ubuntu Studio Will Die…
…if you do not step-up and start giving back to the community by providing each other with technical support. Relying on the developers to provide technical support is not sustainable as they’re simply volunteers themselves and not available all hours of the day.
You get the operating system for free, the only thing we expect in return is you to give back by helping each other out.
With that, we implore you to please start volunteering on the IRC/Matrix chatrooms and/or on askubuntu.com.
Out of 41 entries, the following 10 wallpapers were selected. Congratulations to the winners! These should be included on the daily Focal Fossa (future 20.04 LTS) daily ISO images shortly.
