Ubuntu Studio forum closed

[braintree12]

https://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=335

"This sub-forum is now closed to new threads. You will still be able to post to existing threads for the time being..."

Doesn't sound too good for us Ubuntu Studio users. Any information about this would be appreciated, since the forum itself isn't providing reasons for the closing.

[CrocoDuck]

I tried to search for an answer but I couldn't find any. Even though I am not an Ubuntu user anymore it hurts a tiny bit to see the forum is gone, as my Linux audio adventure started there. However, I think that the forums started dying a lot of time ago. As I posted here:

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...

I think in the last 4 years the quality of the support on the forums deteriorated very significantly. In fact, in the last few months, I totally stopped reading the forums and posting on them. Also, the activity dropped as well. I think it is not so bad that the forums are closing as I don't think I would recommend them for getting support. I would rather point user to LinuxMusicians.

Still, probably none of the above has to do with the closure of the forums. My guess is that it is a pure "logistic" move. After all UStudio is just normal Ubuntu with a particular selection of packages out of the box. I would say that there isn't much so particular to UStudio to justify keeping a separate section in the forums. Instead, probably support will benefit from directing users to the Multimedia Software sub-forum, as many more users read that instead.

[braintree12]

Thanks. I don't have your history with this but it seems to me as a newcomer that Ubuntu Studio is struggling and closing the forum might relate to that.
The release notes for 16.04 stated: "In January 2016 we had an election for a new project lead, and the winner was Set Hallström, who will be taking over the project lead position right after this release. He will be continuing for another two years until the next election in 2018. The team of developers has also seen a positive increase lately, which bodes well for the future. So, all in all, this release marks a new page in the history of Ubuntu Studio and makes the distribution as strong as it has ever been. "
Six months later, the release notes for Ubuntu Studio 16.10 stated "In January 2016 we had an election for a new project lead, only one person answered. And while the number of contributors saw a positive increase during the cycle, it barely made up for the ones who have left; yes, Ubuntu Studio is a flavour menaced by extinction! The road to this release was bumpy and hard. But we made it."
The release notes for 17.04, last month, don't have any statements about the strength or weakness of the distro.
I plan to keep 16.04 until its end of life and then see what is happening in 2019.

[alepeccioli]

I follow the dev list of Ubuntu Studio, although at the moment I am not Ubuntu user, but I have not read any direct comment about the forum there, but there have been some discussions about the lack of people available to support new users. Maybe it has to do with this ...

[alepeccioli]

And discussions about upcoming releases continue to occur normally in the email list dev ...

[braintree12]

Thanks, that's good to know.
I use Mint for everything except audio, so I don't need the other software on Ubuntu Studio so much. Reading LinuxMusicians and other forums, there seems to be a debate on whether Ubuntu Studio "tweaks for audio" or whether it is just Ubuntu plus media packages. My experience is it works better for audio than Mint (no xruns, etc) but I also got a faster processor and more RAM when I switched so that may make my testing unreliable.
Not having the Unity desktop is a plus, I'm not sure I could stand that.

[CrocoDuck]

LinuxMusicians and other forums, there seems to be a debate on whether Ubuntu Studio "tweaks for audio" or whether it is just Ubuntu plus media packages.

It tweaks audio indeed (UStudio 16.04 was tweaked when I looked at it the last time), but according to my understanding the tweaks are implemented in the ubuntu-studio packages. As such, installing the ubuntu-studio packages on top of any Ubuntu installation should pull in the same tweaks. I am not too sure about that tho, it would be nice to verify whether the Ubuntu studio packages do change the system configuration.

[braintree12]

Thanks for the link to your assessment. Yes, it would be nice to know (re: installing the packages on top of regular Ubuntu) but since there is no forum...

[CrocoDuck]

Thanks for the link to your assessment. Yes, it would be nice to know (re: installing the packages on top of regular Ubuntu) but since there is no forum...

Unfortunately I think we would have had to figure that out by ourselves anyway, also in the presence of the forums. The UStudio devs were not used to read the forums. In fact, I never had any reply to specific questions about UStudio development and configuration. For example, the last time I asked whether it was possible to find any documentation on the lowlatency kernel development I ended up conjecturing about it with other fellow (and as clueless as me) users.

[asbak]

Thanks, that's good to know.
I use Mint for everything except audio, so I don't need the other software on Ubuntu Studio so much. Reading LinuxMusicians and other forums, there seems to be a debate on whether Ubuntu Studio "tweaks for audio" or whether it is just Ubuntu plus media packages. My experience is it works better for audio than Mint (no xruns, etc) but I also got a faster processor and more RAM when I switched so that may make my testing unreliable.
Not having the Unity desktop is a plus, I'm not sure I could stand that.

I'm not aware of any mainstream Linux desktop distro which doesn't xrun and work sub-optimally with audio straight after installation from the vendor media. (Ubuntustudio is a multimedia tweaked version of mainstream Ubuntu.) My guess is that Ubuntustudio is just a remixed Ubuntu release with a low-latency kernel, a few tweaks and multimedia packages tacked on. A motivated Linux user with reasonable skills can achieve the same thing or more by themselves when using any typical Linux desktop distro. Debian derived desktop OS's already have an enormous base set of pre-made audio packages available for easy installation. Other Linux desktop distros are less well supported.

I use Mint. It works fine for audio, without xrun issues, provided it's been suitably modified and configured. It is tricky to get all these things right, and for the average user who lacks the experience to do it right it is going to be very difficult to achieve a good result. A lot of information on improving Linux audio performance is out dated, conflicting, confusing, contradictory, obscure and difficult to piece together at first.

Which distro to use boils down to personal preference. When configured properly they don't perform any better or worse than each other.

[braintree12]

I'm definitely in the average user category, and couldn't get Mint working for audio on the PC that I had. Since obtaining a faster processor, PCI sound card, and Ubuntu Studio I've had smooth sailing. I added the KXStudio repositories and have updated some of the software that came with Ubuntu Studio. I've also been regularly updating the kernel, etc. Any problems I've had since the install have been with DAWs and plugins, not the OS. By 2019 I should have a better handle on what I want to replace Ubuntu Studio, if they are actually "extinct" by that time.

[Plug&Play]

I have not been on this or the Ubuntu Studio forum for long while, nor on my music system. I saw that the new release of Ubuntu Studio was out, with the KDE Plasma desktop. I looked for the forum to see how it is being received.. the UbuntuStudio forum is GONE!

I really like xcfe, there is nothing I need beyond what it did, and I do not need to spend time learning the quirks of another desktop.

I am downloading xubuntu 22.04 LTS, and I will be installing KXStudio repositories, Libre Office, Geany and various other tools like JACK utilities, middings etc.

And I will be hoping that linuxmusicians.com remains viable, and if donations help, it's past time I kicked in.

Best to all,

[Largos]

@Plug&Play Check out AV linux https://www.bandshed.net/avlinux/ it uses XFCE.