How To Help Ubuntu Studio

[MiCK.ca]

How to help Ubuntu Studio may be to bring it back around to it's beginnings. Must people i have bumped into who use "studio" are not using that derivative but instead loading Ubuntu and adding apps and RT-Kernel afterwards.

just adding "ubuntu-studio desktop" is not enough. the project is spending time on appearance (which is a "selling point") but the guts of it can be tuned accordingly to perform out of the box so to speak. there is way too much tinkering needed to get ubuntu-studio up and productive. How can we help?

perhaps start a thread or even brainstorm all the little tinkering and tweak each person has had to do to get U-Studio up and productive. fix or change those problems and then ask feedback from users. setting for jack, rt-kernel version etc. Even find out processor, memory and whether they use drivers for their graphics card. trust me. ATi and Nvidia work just fine on VESA settings. AND i get realtime performance without any glitches.

i used 64studio for almost 3.5 years. They have had really no progression since version 2.0. Hard to stick with a distro when you are stuck with dated apps and inability to upgrade due to age of distro. Ubuntu has a HUGE advantage over them...steady constant release.

If there was a way to fix user annoyances, update, upgrade without loosing known good stability then Ubuntu Studio would rock! think i'll go check out brainstorm.

[Stochastic]

How to help Ubuntu Studio may be to bring it back around to it's beginnings. Must people i have bumped into who use "studio" are not using that derivative but instead loading Ubuntu and adding apps and RT-Kernel afterwards.

just adding "ubuntu-studio desktop" is not enough. the project is spending time on appearance (which is a "selling point") but the guts of it can be tuned accordingly to perform out of the box so to speak. there is way too much tinkering needed to get ubuntu-studio up and productive. How can we help?

perhaps start a thread or even brainstorm all the little tinkering and tweak each person has had to do to get U-Studio up and productive. fix or change those problems and then ask feedback from users. setting for jack, rt-kernel version etc. Even find out processor, memory and whether they use drivers for their graphics card. trust me. ATi and Nvidia work just fine on VESA settings. AND i get realtime performance without any glitches.

i used 64studio for almost 3.5 years. They have had really no progression since version 2.0. Hard to stick with a distro when you are stuck with dated apps and inability to upgrade due to age of distro. Ubuntu has a HUGE advantage over them...steady constant release.

If there was a way to fix user annoyances, update, upgrade without loosing known good stability then Ubuntu Studio would rock! think i'll go check out brainstorm.

This sounds like a wonderful idea. Would you be able to start this thread and get the ball rolling? Ubuntu Studio Controls is overdue for an overhaul, and the more features we can pack into it, the better (in my opinion). I would love to see this customization headache disappear.

[H13N.H3N]

No matter what your level of expertise with Ubuntu you can lend a hand. Furthermore, in the field of Multimedia Production on Ubuntu, we NEED your help. A small and overworked team of individuals create Ubuntu Studio and both they and the larger Ubuntu multimedia community need all the help they can get

Word taken, =). let me start speaking what we all know about Linux, the wonder that it is; I've been using linux since new year, starting from Ubuntu 8.10, passing trough Mandriva, Fedora and Archlinux and finalizing with Ubuntu Studio 9.10 K.K. always looking for Multimedia purposes, no need to say that i'm more than happy with Ubuntu Studio, i'm one of those who makes a bit of everything, animation (Flash, Anime Studio, Synfig, Pencil, Ktoon), vector graphics (Inkscape, Illustrator) 3D Design, Animation and misc like games or models (3D Studio, Gmax but the best of all, BLENDER!) not to mention what is my passion in my life, drawing (GIMP, Krita) and some video and audio production (Kdenlive, Lves, Rosengarden, LMMS and so...) the best part is that Ubuntu Studio cames ready with most of this software and one can rely on them as they are well integrated, in this way i have to thank you a lot =).

Now.. let's pass to the ugly part: the downsides:

PulseAudio, perhaps is more than known that PulseAudio causes problems due to it's bugy nature, believe me i know what i'm talking about when i say that it's a bad idea to have it integrated so deep on the system for multimedia purposes
, i don't really know from where to start, really, maybe this topic can help to tell you more than repeat the whole thing here "Audio Problems with PulseAudio in Ubuntu 9.10", maybe for regular users, PulseAudio can be a great help, but is making things sickly heavy for Multimedia production, as i said in that topic, 90% of the multimedia programs that use some audio server depends on PulseAudio,if it's trickly disabled as the default sound server, other programs like Wine and Audacity can work like a charm, but the rest is now completely unusable or incomplete, like VirtualBox, TerminatorX, Mixx, Beast, Lives, Ardour and the list grows up, not for mention the quantity of problems with third party components like the sound volume, the players, the explorers that stream multimedia from web, radio services and so...., PulseAudio is a good choice, but only when it's a choice not an imposition, i have no explain why the developers thought that making PulseAudio the main and the one sound server that can control the audio in Ubuntu 9.10 (talking about Ubuntu 9.10 in General) was or is a good idea. While Realtime Kernel is a big help, PulseAudio is not, at least not the way it is, *is* there anyway that Ubuntu Studio can back to the ALSA or OSS architecture by default? having PulseAudio as an option like it was in the past??? man, seriously, i'm tired of so many crashes, Rosengarden without playback on Midi, TiMidity waiting for PulseAudio Feedback, Jack relying on PA, PulseAudio eating all the sound services and closing Rhythmbox randomnly, PA is all but friendly with Audio development, and before someone say 'Pulse Audio is working fine for me' go and try to work on Rosengarden, Muse, Audacity or Wine, if you have a high performance PC of course it will work good for you but take in count that i'm a student with a student's PC, if i could afford a PC as good as the one that Dreamworks or Disney Pixar has, i wouldn't be complaining of all this (cause i surely would keep using Ubuntu), other than that U-Studio is working more than fine for me

[MiCK.ca]

I will be starting a thread shortly to track peoples annoyances and concerns regarding Ubuntu Studio and Ubuntu used for Studio or production purposes. I first off think PulseAudio should be removed from Ubuntu Studio. It has no place in a Audio Production OS. The system should be ALSA or OSS by default.

Along with research to why and what systems people are running their studios on. be it Pentium's or AMDs. M-audio or Sound Blaster. ...because things act differently in a realtime environment than they do on a generic system.

After a bit of coordinating I'll kick off that thread for input for the Artistic community.

[H13N.H3N]

I first off think PulseAudio should be removed from Ubuntu Studio... The system should be ALSA or OSS by default.

I would recommend just keep PulseAudio as an option, but having ALSA/OSS by default, PA has some *nice* features that are interesting to test, still as you said having it so deeply installed just causes problems, this might be the first step in the path that would make the Studio distribution different to the other regular Ubuntu (i'm not counting at all the RT Kernel) because we must have as much control as we need of our system, PulseAudio is supposed to be a friendly way to take more control of your audio, that works for regular users but we all that need the full potential of our system find this sound server a real disadvantage, i think that Ubuntu Studio should be at complete control of the user, many of us that use it know about audio, video and the distro in general, we aren't novices at all so we know what we want to choice in our system, it's just my opinion of course.

[mango42]

I'm very hesitant about contributing to this sticky as I have merely dipped my toe into Ubuntu Studio as yet. Although I have quite a bit of experience with music programs on the 'other' OS, I'm finding it very hard to get a basic handle on how it all works in Linux, as I am not a programmer.

Despite reading non-stop here and other forums dedicated to Linux Multimedia, I am still completely in the dark about all the various options to get started. A catch22 indeed, as if I knew I would write about it all!

Patchage, MIDI, ALSA, JACK, PulseAudio - how do they all relate? All I have tried so far is to see whether my 8x8 MIDI interface is recognised by Linux. Using lsusb shows it is recognised as an item on the buss (It's a Midex8 by Steinberg and shows as a Steinberg product) but beyond there, all is silence, I think... The ALSA project lists one Steinberg i/f that works - do I have to take the unit apart to see whether it has the supported UART?

My impression so far is that nearly all the documentation is designed (understandably so!) by programmers for programmers who are already fully conversant with Linux - it all seems to quickly descend into terminal terminology and recompiling very scary source code. Not what your average musician can cope with!

So basically, until/unless us tyros are fully prepared (and capable?) to bite the bullet and get up to speed on codespeak, those coming to UbuntuStudio for the first time might be forgiven for thinking that the devil they knew might not have been such a struggle as first appeared (mid versions of Cubase & Logic come to mind!).

I am profoundly impressed at the effort going into this enormous and very worthwhile project. My plea is for more 'non-programmer' documentation - a sort of Ubuntu Studio 101 - but first we need to know how to successfully get started...before we can even begin to contribute to helping the development team.

[goddi]

Hi !

You spent a lot of time on your studio edition. I know. Your Studio edition looks great ! I choosed the milkyway.

First:
I am not an unix CRACK. I worked in the Industry with AIX on a RS6000 as an applicationprogrammer before I built up my "Studio" on Suse 8.0 , again on debian etch after Suses MS deal and now to Ubuntu studio 9.10 because of the kernel. (Rosegarden said - not enough processor power on my 1.3 GHz Athlon with 1GB Ram) It is only my hobby.

First of all I installed the alsa modular synth package 1.8.8 because i like it most. It did not work. There is only an error "Could not open file". Then I tried out amSynth - nothing happens.

Zynadd Jackconnect and Hydrogen work. Other stuff (Alsaconnect) is extremely hard to handle.
Now i go back to my Debian. I am not motivated to spend some weeks again on configuring applications.

I think it would help Ubuntu Studio if it was distributed in a manner, that applications work when you install and start them.

Second - better:

I think the soundapplications (also on suse debian and other distis in the past) are presented like in a junk shop. They are not presented as a studio.

I think it was no big problem to offer some "sound studio scripts" that bring up different functional studios to the desktop, each with and without demo.

for example studiox --demo brings up

jackcontroll
seq24
zynaddsubfx
keyboard
alsa modular
hydrogen
timemachine
on the desktop

with a little demoproduction where it makes biiiiiiiip when you press a keyboardkey. And a little help for rightklick in seq24.

and a "big studio configuration script" where the user can choose 1 of different sequencers, synts, 1 of x recorders, mixers, drummachines that are preconfigured in a manner sound comes out when you press Start. There ist no need for something melodic - Techno is ok.

I think if you do this you will have the widest spreaded Sound studio on this planet.


Nobody wants to buy a cars like this:

I open the box:

there are 4 wheels, a motor - and 4 spark-plugs and some steel in it. I modify the steels so with my hammer, that i can fix the wheels then i put the motor on it. Hu - the motor says "file not found" when i fix the sparkplugs .
I look into the box and there is nobody knows.........



Before I went back to my Debian Etch i tried Ubuntu Studio Hardy ( 8.08 ) I downloaded it, installed it, installed ams and there is the same "could not open file".

I hope I was friendly. I appreciate your work. Beg your pardon, Sirs. I suppose it's my fault.

[crispyrich]

i love ubuntu but until someone sorts out the sound card problems its like having a car with no tyres??
i have tascam us144 and cant use it in ubuntu
will ditch windows as soon as then (wish i could do it but its a bit advanced)
all the best guys
rich

[mango42]

I will be starting a thread shortly to track peoples annoyances and concerns regarding Ubuntu Studio and Ubuntu used for Studio or production purposes. I first off think PulseAudio should be removed from Ubuntu Studio. It has no place in a Audio Production OS. The system should be ALSA or OSS by default.

I look forward to your new thread MiCK. I'm too much of a Linux beginner to start criticising its various aspects but it certainly seems like there are some fundamental conflicts surrounding PulseAudio. My solution so far is to have two separate Ubuntu 9.04's. One for general and net use incorporating PA and another with the excellent realtime kernel and no Pulseaudio purely for audio production, although I'm not convinced it has been entirely eradicated as it still shows up in Preferences | Sound | Devices tab but not in system monitor processes. Hmm.

Along with research to why and what systems people are running their studios on. be it Pentium's or AMDs. M-audio or Sound Blaster. ...because things act differently in a realtime environment than they do on a generic system.

After a bit of coordinating I'll kick off that thread for input for the Artistic community.

I'm starting 'small' on a Thinkpad T43 with Focusrite Firewire Audio and ESI usb MIDI. If I can get this working smoothly and once experience has been gained, I'll attempt a 64 bit version on a AMD Turion machine.

The permutations are endless but I have every confidence in this wonderful, if somewhat anarchic , global co-operative effort.

[pete25r]

I'll second the above post about all the info being deep into the code.
It would be really nice to have some simpler explanations that answer simple questions like "why can't I run more than one audio application at once?"

Ok sure get to the part about how Jack isn't in Main but first explain what is main or at least show me a link where I can read more on the deep dive you just made.

I'm relatively new to linux. I've been running Ubuntu off and on since version 6 something. My big problem is I can't find simple walk throughs of the applications or tasks I need to do in order to keep flying the Ubuntu flag.

To redeem myself from the above dribble...

Something I'm really looking for in an OS/application environment is the ability to share the system resources between applications. As in I want to be able to run Hydrogen, export the track (.wav file) and play it back on VLC without having to close Hydrogen.
I need to move from one peice of audio software to the other with both have "works in progress", as in work that isn't saved and will be having frequent changes made.
Having to save and re-open breaks the creative flow.