We would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who submitted a wallpaper for the Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS wallpaper contest. We had 41 submissions, out of which we have narrowed it down to 17 of the best.
Out of these 17, the top 10 will be selected to be a part of Ubuntu Studio 20.04’s wallpaper selection. Please note that none of these will be selected to be the default desktop wallpaper as that’s already being done by a long-time member of the Ubuntu Studio development team.
As we begin getting closer to the next release date of Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS, now is a great time to show what the best of the Ubuntu Studio Community has to offer! We know that many of our users are graphic artists and photographers and we would like to see their/your talent also reflected more directly in the upcoming version.
For this purpose, we are holding a wallpaper contest. Submission will be open to works of photography, codeart, abstract paintings, illustrations and other art genres that highlight the capabilities of the software available and of open source software in general.
The Ubuntu Studio leadership will be selecting a short list of images that will be put up to public vote. The top selections will become part of the wallpaper pool of Ubuntu Studio 20.04 LTS.
To submit, upload your creation to imgur.com and tag it with #ubustucontest2020. We are looking forward to seeing your creations!
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:
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:
Spam has been an issue.
People in the Telegram groups have, at times, not been abiding by the Ubuntu IRC Guidelines, the key one being staying on-topic in the Support group.
Support via a bot-based bridge is difficult as messages appear to come from a single user in IRC (studiobot) and Telegram (Ubuntu Studio Bridge Bot).
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.
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.
Other News
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.
How You Can Help
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).
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 Studiois 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.
Additional Audio Plugins
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.
RaySession
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.
New Ubuntu Studio Controls
Ubuntu Studio Controls version 1.11.3 is included in this release, and provides numerous improvements:
Now includes an indicator to show whether or not Jack is running
Added Jack backend selections: Firewire, ALSA, or Dummy (used for testing configurations)
Added convenient buttons for starting other configuration tools
Other Changes
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.
Want to help out?
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.
Found a bug?
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.
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.
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,
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.
