Ubuntu Studio's reputation

What other apps and distros do you use to round out your studio?

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thebutant
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Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by thebutant »

There is a question I'd like to hear poeple's opinion on:
It seems to me that Ubuntu Studio has quite a low rating in this community - why do you think it is so?

A couple of examples:
- When (the very good) Libre Music Production recommends Audio oriented distros, they mention KXStudio and AVLinux. Not Ubuntu Studio, which would be a natural suggestion (http://libremusicproduction.com/article ... stribution)
- Comments like this
English Guy wrote:I recently put Ubuntu Studio on a friends laptop and found it unusable for several reasons (. . . )
seem to be fairly common here (this is not meant as a confrontation, just an example).

The reason I ask:
I used to think Ubuntu Studio was too big, bloated, slow and so on some years ago. I set up my up distros, tweaked them like I wanted to.
Then I started working with sound and music for a living. Every day. So I needed something stable.
The result is that I have trusted Ubuntu Studio with additional KXStudio repos for my daily work the last 3 years. And it's been extremely stable, very customizable, it just works damn good for me, and I also think it's easy to make really beautiful (with some xfce tweaks). And on a modern powerful computer, like many of us have, it is even the quickest distro I have ever been using. I had to eat my prejudices one by one.

So I am a bit sad to see they are struggling to survive (as they write in the release notes for 16.10), and that they seem to lack support among us audio focused users.

So why do you think it is like this?
Is it Ubuntu being the big commercial player with Canonical and all?
Why does it feel a bit embarrassing to even say or write here that "Yes, I do actually use Ubuntu Studio. Just because it works so good for me."?
Lyberta
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Re: Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by Lyberta »

Well, vanilla Ubuntu is one of the worst distros by a huge margin and KXStudio repos work on any Debian distro.
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Re: Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by briandc »

If it works, use it! ;) I have been using Ubuntu Studio with KXStudio repositories since 2012. I still do on one laptop, but my desktop now runs AntiX with the KXStudio repos. AntiX is Debian-based, and fits on a CD. I have a little philosophy: "smaller means less risk." There were/are lots of things included in Ubuntu Studio that I personally don't use (and could take the time to uninstall, maybe a job for next weekend...!). However, I do notice a difference is speed with AntiX. So I'm happier with AntiX now. :)


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sysrqer
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Re: Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by sysrqer »

If I wanted to use xfce I would probably give it a try. It was one of the first distros I used but I don't remember much about my experience with it. Really though, for me at least, it coming with a DE I don't want as well as tools I don't use (qjackctl etc) it's just easier to install something closer to my needs.

I don't know why it doesn't include cadence, catia, carla by default. One of the things that people struggle with is jack and making it work (both in an on/off way and dealing with non-jack programs). Even after using jack for several years I still have trouble with qjackctl. Cadence just works for me and I think usability of the distro would be improved a lot if it were the default.
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English Guy
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Re: Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by English Guy »

Ubuntu Studio had always worked fine for me as a live distro but the times I have installed it I have had problems. The first time I installed it was problems with audio latency. The second time it was with graphics, on screen tearing. The only solution produced all sorts of problems. Both times I did not have the same problems with stock Debian.

If it works for you great. For me it was easier to customise a Debian install than to try and fix Ubuntu Studio.
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tenryu
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Re: Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by tenryu »

My own humble experiment:
Laptop HP Probook 6450b Intel I5 8GO memory with Ubuntu studio 16.04 Xfce: Latency with build in intel soundcard 20 ms, with focusrite Scarlett 6i6 USB 11,2 ms with some Xruns.
Laptop HP Probook 6450b Intel I5 8GO memory with Manjaro Linux Xfce 16.08 : Latency with build in intel soundcard 5 ms, with focusrite Scarlett 6i6 USB 2 ms with rare Xruns.

No scientific experiment, just my own feeling: Although it was my music distro for 10 years, Ubuntu studio is out.
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ufug
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Re: Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by ufug »

Aside from real issues with any given release (of any distro--hello Fedora 24!), Ubuntu seems to suffer partly from its own success and popularity. A lot of Linux users love obscurity, a good challenge, and 100% non-proprietary software, so something that dominates the Linux press and focuses so much effort on ease of use attracts a lot of take-downs. All Ubuntu flavors get some of that flak. Much cooler to use Arch, right?

As for Ubuntu Studio, it's a cool project, but it has never defined itself very well. Sure, a few users are into graphics AND audio, but I for one don't want a new install with tons of pre-installed graphics apps (and I'm sure graphics people feel the same way about the audio apps). And these days it's the KXStudio repos that really make an audio distro shine anyway--if you don't make installing KX a key part of the experience (such as a script to install them sitting on your desktop at first boot), then there's not much point to it being considered an audio specialty distro IMHO. I want Ubuntu Studio to succeed, but at the same time I don't really "get it".

I do love Xfce though!

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Re: Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by CrocoDuck »

I don't like Ubuntu. Interestingly, I used it for most of my life (almost 10 years). For I don't like I just mean "it is not among my favourites". If someone tells me "choose between Ubuntu and Windo..."... well you see, he/she would not even have the time to complete the sentence :D .

EDIT: Wait a second... not sure the maths add up: 2014 - 2006 = 8. Actually almost 8 years, not 10...

I don't like that Ubuntu comes with a lot fo software I don't use. Also, I don't like that few packages are modified instead of being straight from upstream. I had pretty awful looking Firefox browsing experiences with Ubuntu, for example. I don't like the release cycle (I become a rolling release guy) and I clearly remember formatting my computer once a year with Ubuntu: it was used to become sluggish. It is packed with goodies, but the massive out-of-the-box configuration tend to make things harder for me: every time I had to fix some trouble I felt like applying some superficial unstable patch. And I had to configure a lot: back in my days (I am becoming an old duck) Ubuntu Studio was not configured properly for audio. I had to manually adjust conf files, so there was not a huge gain in installing it, a part the software collection (but that has changed). Moreover, I am not a fun of the fact that packages in the repo tend to lag behind without many noticeable stability improvements (although seems like that they are now much better and keeping up to date).

This made my life I little more inconvenient. I know, it sounds strange said by an Arch user, but everything is much simpler if you take care of your system from the ground up. On "user friendly" operating systems I usually struggle -a lot-. Because I have to figure out the system first and then what to do to implement my configuration next. On Arch I remove the first step: I already know the system. I made it.

However, what that I like less of Ubuntu is not in the above. The worst thing is that they never fixed few bugs / problems that date back to 8.04. like version advancement upgrades that break the whole system or the fact that installing over a pre-existing Linux partition using the Ubuntu installer, explicitly telling it to format the partition, might result in a corrupted installation. Even if I have switched to Arch more or less 4-5 years ago I am still active on Ubuntu forums. I see posts about these things (and many other recurring issues) -a lot-.

Finally: the very worst thing in my opinion: lack of documentation and dying audio community. Maybe the first is not a huge problem. Even if official documentation, especially for audio, is very scarce, Ubuntu user can pretty much recycle whatever works on other distros and there are tons of Debian examples. What hurts me most is the audio side of the community. I am active on Ubuntu Studio Forums (I think I even have more post there than on Linux Musicians). Most of the users that were very active, knowledgeable and helpful... are gone. More and more questions are left unanswered. The problem is that the "user friendly" reputation has drove many newcomers to Ubuntu. This is great. However, these newcomers never do their homework and post questions that are trivial, usually solved by "check that you selected the right devices in qjackctl". As such, the power users grow tired of answering, I guess. Worst, many newcomers are help vampires. Sometimes I post an answer just to get silence back: a lot of people give up after not having the tutorial delivered in few seconds or after seeing they have to enter commands in a terminal. This sucks a little bit...
Last edited by CrocoDuck on Wed Oct 19, 2016 7:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
thebutant
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Re: Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by thebutant »

Lots of good points here, thanks for your replies.
tenryu wrote:My own humble experiment:
Laptop HP Probook 6450b Intel I5 8GO memory with Ubuntu studio 16.04 Xfce: Latency with build in intel soundcard 20 ms, with focusrite Scarlett 6i6 USB 11,2 ms with some Xruns.
Laptop HP Probook 6450b Intel I5 8GO memory with Manjaro Linux Xfce 16.08 : Latency with build in intel soundcard 5 ms, with focusrite Scarlett 6i6 USB 2 ms with rare Xruns.
This is indeed interesting. And a huge setback for Ubuntu Studio. I have never done similar experiments myself, never had any issues with it. Thank you for checking! (Manjaro is really great, by the way. I've always had a soft spot for it.)
ufug wrote:Aside from real issues with any given release (of any distro--hello Fedora 24!), Ubuntu seems to suffer partly from its own success and popularity. A lot of Linux users love obscurity, a good challenge, and 100% non-proprietary software, so something that dominates the Linux press and focuses so much effort on ease of use attracts a lot of take-downs. All Ubuntu flavors get some of that flak. Much cooler to use Arch, right?

As for Ubuntu Studio, it's a cool project, but it has never defined itself very well. Sure, a few users are into graphics AND audio, but I for one don't want a new install with tons of pre-installed graphics apps (and I'm sure graphics people feel the same way about the audio apps). And these days it's the KXStudio repos that really make an audio distro shine anyway--if you don't make installing KX a key part of the experience (such as a script to install them sitting on your desktop at first boot), then there's not much point to it being considered an audio specialty distro IMHO. I want Ubuntu Studio to succeed, but at the same time I don't really "get it".
I think you are really on to something. Or at least 2 things:
Maybe Ubuntu Studio is too much "anything creative", rather than an actual studio distro. I never thought of this, but I think you're right - it is a bit unfocused.

And yes, it seems silly to be tech interested, ditch the mainstream and then use Ubuntu. I always found the ubuntu crowd strange - after Windows I went straight to more obscure distros myself. And I understand that people would contribute to underdog distros rather than work voluntarily for corporate Ubuntu.

Nevertheless, there is also an upside to Ubuntu Studio being backed by this big player: We can expect an effort from them. As far as I understand the alternatives are based on the good work of individuals. What if KXStudio's amazing FalkTX gets tired of it, or the people behind AVLinux stop making it?
They don't have any responsibility to keep Linux audio alive like Ubuntu Studio (should) feel obliged to.

On the other hand, reading this thread sure has made me want to check out the various alternatives again.
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GMaq
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Re: Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by GMaq »

Hi,

I cut my Linux Audio teeth on Ubuntu Studio back when it had it's first release back in 2006 or so, I haven't used it since then. As an observer I think the official Ubuntu repostories seem too slow to provide updates and too slow to fix things that are known broken, there were many years that UbStu provided broken Ardour packaging (!?) and they had Calf plugins with a very bad known fftw3 issue for a very long time as well. These are the sort of things that need quick attention in a specialized Audio distro. I would hazard to guess that much of the reason for KXStudio appearing in the first place was due to long running issues and slow updates in the official Ubuntu repos which are shared by UbStu. Of course if you didn't rely on any of the broken stuff or for instance use the Ardour builds from Ardour.org and don't require an RT kernel for acceptable latencies then there is probably a lot to like about Ubuntu Studio.

AV Linux is not here to compete with or supplant Ubuntu Studio, I wanted the freedom to:
  • Include proprietary software and demos so people can make an informed choice of all available options (UbStu can't do this)
    Provide a full RT Preempt kernel OOTB (Ubuntu no longer maintains RT, for many USB interfaces it is a MUST have)
    Add, fix and update any packages I wanted to without waiting and going through slow official channels.
I think Ubuntu Studio is not quite tweaked and specialized enough for 'power user' types doing Audio and probably that also explains why it gets generally lukewarm reviews here where many people are not just casually investigating Audio content creation...

Just some thoughts..
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Re: Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by asbak »

Imo the project is a bit under-resourced and behind the curve. It's usable but possibly of more use to beginners and as an introduction into Linux Multimedia than something one would want to use in anger once you've gotten going.

A vanilla distro + your own configuration & installation is the most up to date and optimised route, but it takes a lot of trial & error to understand how much of it works.

The trade-off is the investment in your time and doing it yourself vs US's convenience, a lack of features, outdated software and possibly performance which may not be as optimal as it could be.
Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
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Re: Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by bhilmers »

I think Ubuntu Studio is great for a certain slice of Linux users. I come from a multi-media background and U:Studio saves me a lot of time on a fresh install. I can see how audio-centric users might be turned off of U:Studio's "inadequacy" out of the box, but let's face it, Linux Audio is still a bit of a nightmare and the variety of user needs is much too great. It would be nice if U:Studio had stronger a stronger audio suite, but that's not their focus and they don't have the staff for it anyway. Since KX Studio works so nicely I don't see why U:Studio couldn't just say "hey, here are some good audio tools. If this is not enough, it is very easy to install this add-on project." Not a big deal.

I think some people get hung up on the word "Studio" and automatically think "Recording Studio" and expect something different, which might be disappointing. When I read the name Ubuntu Studio in my head I think "Creative Suite" because that's what it is. I do just as much photo/vector/video work as audio and U:Studio suits me fine.
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Re: Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by sadko4u »

CrocoDuck wrote:I don't like Ubuntu. Interestingly, I used it for most of my life (almost 10 years). For I don't like I just mean "it is not among my favourites". If someone tells me "choose between Ubuntu and Windo..."... well you see, he/she would not even have the time to complete the sentence :D .
Soon there will be no difference between Ubunto and WIndo...:
https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2016/C906

So you already can throw out this distro.
LSP (Linux Studio Plugins) Developer and Maintainer.
CrocoDuck
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Re: Ubuntu Studio's reputation

Post by CrocoDuck »

sadko4u wrote:
CrocoDuck wrote:I don't like Ubuntu. Interestingly, I used it for most of my life (almost 10 years). For I don't like I just mean "it is not among my favourites". If someone tells me "choose between Ubuntu and Windo..."... well you see, he/she would not even have the time to complete the sentence :D .
Soon there will be no difference between Ubunto and WIndo...:
https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2016/C906

So you already can throw out this distro.
Oh dang... loosing all my certainty here. I have some feeling a day, few years ahead, I will be trying to make music on FreeBSD...
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