Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

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

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hjhmusic
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Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by hjhmusic »

I'm wondering what are the current best options for questions/problems with Ubuntu Studio.

Ubuntu Studio pages recommend askubuntu. This seems to be hit or miss, however. I recall a few questions that I asked that never got any response. Maybe some of the questions did (I don't remember at this point -- though I did sometimes find some good pre-existing answers by searching), but I don't recall that being an especially responsive support channel.

There is an IRC, but in over a decade of Ubuntu usage, I find overwhelmingly that "support IRC channel" really means: open the chat, type in your question, keep the chat open for several hours and probably not get an answer.

Bug reporting: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ubunt ... ortingBugs says "Bugs concerning Ubuntu Studio are reported at the Ubuntu Studio Launchpad Page" but the link to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntustudio-project only says "You cannot report a bug for The Ubuntu Studio Project as none of the projects within the group use Launchpad for bug tracking. Please check the individual projects for details of where bugs are reported."

So for instance, today, qasmixer again randomly split one of the built-in outputs into separate left and right faders. As this is sporadic behavior, it looks like a bug. Searching "qasmixer bug reports" doesn't turn up anything useful. https://ubuntustudio.org/support/ doesn't list a bug tracker (and searching "ubuntu studio bug reports" leads to the above-mentioned dead end). The "ask*" sites are fairly strict about what is an acceptable question (definitely not for bug reporting, and this kind of meta-support-question is way off limits there).

So... you have a problem... where do you go?

I don't mean to diss the great community effort that puts out Ubuntu Studio. I've been using it for a few years and really like it. But the support thing is not quite functioning from the user's perspective.

hjh

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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

Switch to "AV Linux". The guy who puts it together is always around here helping people work out any problems they encounter. The "tech support" is therefore probably the best you're going to get for a music distro.

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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by Largos »

This looks like the place to report qas bugs https://gitlab.com/sebholt/qastools/-/issues

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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by thetotalchaos »

I will try connecting with the developer(s) of the particular app. Or i will connect with Debian Multimedia maintainers. Both are upstream, compared to what ends up on Ubuntu Studio.

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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by MattKingUSA »

Other than switching your distro you do have the option of paid support for a single machine. It's about 25 USD billed yearly from Ubuntu. Ubuntu Studio or recognized as an official distro of Ubuntu. If paid is not a good option I would agree that contacting the author of the code would be your very best option.

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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by sunrat »

thetotalchaos wrote: Mon Feb 27, 2023 7:37 pm

I will try connecting with the developer(s) of the particular app. Or i will connect with Debian Multimedia maintainers. Both are upstream, compared to what ends up on Ubuntu Studio.

Pretty sure Debian Multimedia maintainers won't be interested in what happens in Ubuntu, unless you can reproduce the issue in pure Debian.

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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by hjhmusic »

j_e_f_f_g wrote: Mon Feb 27, 2023 4:36 am

Switch to "AV Linux". The guy who puts it together is always around here helping people work out any problems they encounter.

Cool, perhaps my next OS install. I just set up this machine within the past 4 months, not eager to reinstall everything.

Generally it's a pretty smooth experience with Ubuntu Studio... it's not like I'm on askubuntu daily. But, when something goes wrong, it's quite strange to find so many closed doors.

Thanks @largos for the QAS link. I couldn't find it.

Thanks for all the tips!

hjh

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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by RyanH »

This isn't exactly helpful, but I've had the same general issue. I also noticed that contradiction with Ubuntu Studio support, and I've also put up a few questions on Ask Ubuntu and received few, if any answers.

Tricky situation. Especially tricky if your problem relates to how Ubuntu Studio implemented a piece of software rather than the software itself. For example, I've had a problem with fluidsynth, but I'm pretty sure it's not fluidsynth that's the issue, it's the way Ubuntu Studio connected it under the hood (I could be wrong, but the same version works fine on Kubuntu). So there's not much point in opening a support ticket for fluidsynth.

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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by Locynaeh »

Hi hjhmusic,

I follow the project without using it (which is just a few bunch of people, quite a little project) through their mailing lists :

I see regularly bug reports here, please try. Hope you will find answers :)

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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by GMaq »

On a side note about from a project that has been named here...

Compared to AV Linux Ubuntu Studio is huge, with a development team. mailing lists and a few large forums that relate to it and still some queries don't get answers, this is unfortunately to be expected with free projects made in people's spare time. I've found over 15 years of doing this that most people do not willingly donate (although those who do often donate regularly) and people for the most part don't want much to do with providing support for a project they don't do themselves..

Every AVL release I ask for donations and I beg for people to share the support load and very few pick up the phone, the few that do make an incredible difference not only to me but also the the Users who get help. People assume if you put together an OS on an ISO that you know everything about Linux, in my case I know a lot about building an ISO, what settings for Audio to optimize and how to get Audio stuff to work together, XDG stuff like how launchers and Icons work... beyond that I probably know less about networking, USB quirks and the intricacies of GRUB than many of the people here..

This is why single person or small support teams often are at a loss to solve all problems because it takes a village and people who are not only Audio experts but experts about regular Linux sysadmin stuff and that is a big ask even for something the size of Ubuntu Studio.

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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by hjhmusic »

Locynaeh wrote: Wed Mar 01, 2023 10:02 am

I follow the project without using it (which is just a few bunch of people, quite a little project) through their mailing lists :

I see regularly bug reports here, please try. Hope you will find answers :)

Thanks. I think I will have to try this.

For years of using Ubuntu Studio I could run it for days/weeks without a reboot, now I'm rebooting multiple times a day for really stupid desktop failures (such as, the touchpad driver choked after I plugged in a removable drive, and after rebooting from that, I was using the system for about five minutes and then the taskbar at the top became inactive... reboot again)... I can't tell if it's Ubuntu Studio's integration of it or if it's just that KDE Plasma is full of bugs. (KDE Plasma FWIW says "you have to upgrade Plasma" but the Ubuntu packaging for 20.04 prohibits upgrading... effectively, then, I'm forced to do a full system upgrade with all the attendant risks, which I am not going to do on the day of a performance... yes... today).

First time in 12+ years I've considered abandoning Linux. Ubuntu Studio with XFCE was super stable, less flashy/fun than Plasma but I would really prefer It Just Works over the garbage I've been dealing with for the last couple of weeks.

hjh

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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by hjhmusic »

... and, there's a hard reboot because the window manager stopped responding to mouse clicks or any typing at all (probably a bug in the JACK studio controls app... which is another thing where "bugs are fixed in the latest version" but there is no way to get a newer version).

I'll omit the expletives, but this user experience is really not OK.

hjh

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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by Largos »

If Plasma crashes, you can restart it with the command

Code: Select all

plasmashell --replace

without rebooting. You can type that in krunner or, as I do, have that bound to a keyboard shortcut. A lot quicker than rebooting. I use KDE, although not in ubuntu studio, I hardly ever need to reboot because of a crash.

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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by sunrat »

Largos wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 2:18 pm

If Plasma crashes, you can restart it with the command

Code: Select all

plasmashell --replace

I too use KDE Plasma and experienced rare graphical issues where kwin would fail to draw windows, usually accompanied by a message in System Settings Display > Compositing section that OpenGL had been disabled and to try Xrender. I finally did try Xrender and have had no fails since and don't notice any difference in window drawing.
Full desktop crash were nothing is responsive I seem to remember occasionally from years ago, but none lately.
Debian Bullseye w/ Liquorix kernel, GTX970 w/ Nvidia drivers.

hjhmusic
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Re: Ubuntu Studio support methods, current situation?

Post by hjhmusic »

Good tip about plasmashell... I'll have to set that up... well... after reinstalling EVERYTHING.

I saw that Plasma 5.27 ships with Ubuntu 22.10, so I upgraded. Big mistake. The desktop is hopelessly laggy, can't even open Chrome. I'm typing this on my old machine.

At this point I'll have to go with a known quantity and downgrade to 22.04, sticking with Ubuntu Studio for now bc I don't have time for unknowns.

My next system will not be Ubuntu Studio, unless somebody comes through with some answers. Really loved it these few years but this is not OK.

BTW I signed onto the mailing list and explained my situation and the response has been... oh right. Nothing. While I understand how hard it is for a small team to handle support requests, there's... uh... NO activity on the mailing list (check the archives, there's exactly one post for the whole month of March -- mine!). They can't exactly claim to be overwhelmed with questions...

hjh

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