planet.linuxaudio.org

Oneiroi from Befaco is a mythical variety chocolate box where every flavor is delicious. It's an experimental slash drone slash sound design treasure box. And now it's in VCV Rack.

The post Befaco Oneiroi, all-in-one soundscape module, now in VCV Rack appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

Week highlights: further progress with new PDF exporter in Inkscape, Scribus team is closing up on v1.7.0, new version of libwacom, new features in FreeCAD.

Inkscape

I already discussed this topic in a recent weekly recap, but now there’s a video from Martin where he lists features supported by the new CMYK-capable PDF exporter in Inkscape.

In short, it’s almost everything you expect: shapes, fills (including regular and mesh gradients), strokes, markers, masks and clipping paths, blending modes, symbols, page bleeds, margins, page labels. Images seem to present a bit of an challenge, so support is partial for now.

Scribus

On Dec 11, the Scribus team sent an announcement to translators on Transifex that v1.7.0 and v1.6.3 are going to be released in a couple of weeks. That makes it a new year release or so.

The v1.7 branch is coming with significant UI changes, partly thanks to switching to Qt Advanced Docking System, partly thanks to an overall revamp of the interface by a couple of new contributors. There are more changes than that, though: style-based TOC and indexing, new whitespace review mode, better basepoint manipulation.

libwacom 2.14

The new version of libwacom introduces various fixes and support for new devices:

• Joshua Goins added support for XP-Pen Artist 22R Pro, ZP-Pen Artist 24 Pro.
• Mahdi Hasan add tablet data file for XP Pen Deco Fun L.
• Peter Hutterer added support for styli from vendors other than Wacom and a XP-Pen ACK05 Remote data file. He also added support for Huion KeyDial K20 and improved support for KD100.

For a complete list of changes, please see the changelog.

You won’t be using libwacom directly, but it’s what e.g. GNOME’s configuration dialog for graphic tablets depends on to get information about device capabilities.

FreeCAD

Main changes to introduce core datums have landed. There’s now UI for inserting them in the Structure toolbar.

Werner Mayer is cleaning up implementation details, and Pierre-Louis Boyer is polishing up the UX. In particular, he added back the XY, XZ, and YZ labels on planes for the LCS when you insert a new sketch. The initial restyling was missing that. This pull request, however, is being reviewed at the moment.

BIM is getting more features to. Yorik van Havre implemented support for 2D objects in NativeIFC (think linework, texts, dimensions etc.). The Views Manager now includes 2D views, and the BIM annotation toolbar got a new “Create 2D Drawing” tool.

Artworks

Dragons Dancing In The Blue Sky by Horti B:

Tobu. Golem spirit bu Amayon, painted with Krita:

Festival by Andrey Ivasenko, painted with Krita:

The Forgotten Spire by Abdul Wahab, made with Blender and Photoshop:

Kurzschwardzenbuglen Nature Sanctuary by Yaroslavus_Artem, painted with Krita:

Sunset y Gurkirat Singkh, painted with Krita:

Fun

Kris Wilk used FreeCAD to design a gingerbread house that doesn’t need proverbial (and literal) nails:

Textures and scenes, trees and architecture – Epic consolidated all their stores for Unreal, Fortnite, and 3D creators (even rival Unity) on what they call Fab back in late October. The dust has settled, and you should go claim some free content if you haven’t already – including a ton of spectacular Megascans for Unreal […]

The post Fab.com is the new home for Epic 3D content – now go claim free stuff appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

Week highlights: new major releases of Hugin and OBS Studio, new beta of Friction 1.0, FreeCAD and Audacity dev news.

Hugin 2024.1

Thomas Modes released a new version of Hugin. I haven’t shot panoramas for a long time, so I’m not a great judge of this anymore. Nevertheless, here are the main changes:

• There’s now a browser project files, with thumbnails and project details of all project files in a directory.
• Metadata is now properly read in CR3 files.
• The cpfind tool now uses multirow strategy by default.

Unfortunately, Thomas is not just sticking with SourceForge for source code hosting, he’s also sticking with Mercurial for VCS. This may be a contributing factor to how few contributions the project has been getting in recent years. On the other hand, xpano is not terribly popular among contributors so far either despite being hosted on GitHub. I guess I’m just missing the good old days when there were several regular developers and active GSoC participation.

Friction 1.0beta2

The new version comes mainly with fixes, but there are some noteworthy new features too.

Here are some of those features:

• New color picker tool: select objects, enable the tool (F9), hover something and left-click to apply to fills or right-click to apply to strokes of selected objects. The status bar now shows hover color and its RGB values.
• In/Out markers: you can create them on the timeline, there are Scene menu items for that too, and the renderer now supports the In/Out range.
• Toolbars management: you can now control what toolbars you see in the UI, dock them anywhere you like, and control the toolbars’ alignment.
• The subpath effect now has an Offset parameter (contributed by Pablo Gil), so you can animate a “trimmed” path.
• SVG export now has support for animateMotion (follow path).
• Null objects have a “crosshair” type now.
• For macOS users, there’s now an experimental build, and it comes with an extra feature—multitouch support:
  • Pan: slide two fingers, alt modifier to zoom
  • Zoom: pinch with two fingers
  • Smart zoom: double-tap with two fingers

For details and other changes, please see release notes.

FreeCAD

Simulation finally landed on the upstream Assembly workbench. With this feature, you should be able to program the motion of multiple parts. I’m not kidding about programming the motion:

The idea is that you select a joint, program how to animate it with a formula, and set the duration of the animation and the length of steps. After that, keyframes are generated for you, and you can navigate between them.

The feature was originally developed by Dr. Aik-Siong Koh and then improved by Pierre-Louis Boyer, both Ondsel employees at the time. Simulation has a number of limitations. It’s not very fast and limited to just a few joint types. I’d expect further improvements there.

Next on the list is initial work on top-down design support in Assembly. The toolbar now has a command to insert a part in context. So you start inserting a part, select a feature of an existing part to use as a reference, and then click OK. In the example below, I selected a circular feature.

This will create a new body where the local coordinate system depends on what you selected. So when you add a sketch to that body, it will sit right where you want it to be.

When you insert a part that way, you can also tell FreeCAD to either insert that part into the document or create a new document and link it in your assembly. I’d expect further tweaks and improvements, but this already lays a good foundation for in-context design.

Moving on. The last time I mentioned that Kacper Donat got a grant to work on unifying Part and Part Design and making transparent previews. Well, this work has other outcomes too. A new patch from Kacper, currently in draft, adds a much improved Transform task panel, with further improvements planned:

This patch is waiting for another patch to land first: Kacper is introducing inter-module communication so that modules can talk to each other without direct dependence. In this particular case, the new Transform panel is supposed to be able to realign the dragger placement based on user selection, and you can’t calculate the placement without the Part module.

OBS Studio 31.0

The new version of the popular streaming and screencasting program comes with some really useful new features:

• NVIDIA Blur Filter and Background Blur
• Preview scrollbars and zoom/scale indicator
• v210 format support for AJA device capture
• Amazon IVS service integration
• QSV AV1 Screen Content Coding
• First-party YouTube Chat features enabled

The full list of changes is here.

Audacity

Martin Keary posted a new teaser for Audacity’s updated user interface based on Qt/QML.

It’s not yet what you get when you try CI builds on GitHub: it kinda looks the part, but has MuseScore’s guts all over the place and you can’t record or import any audio. Understandably, completing Audacity v4 will take time.

Ardour

I’m conflicted about reporting dev news for Ardour. The project has been going through some serious UI changes lately, but nothing is set in stone, and many things are in flux and will look different tomorrow. It looks like the goal is to make the user interface more approachable and flexible.

Artworks

Lighthouse by Viacheslav Voloshyn, made with Blender and Krita:

Viacheslav also shot a video that guides you through the creation of this artwork:

Gate to Another Realm by Max Schiller, made with Blender and Photoshop:

Canal Port Town by Nikita Gritsun, made with Blender and Photoshop:

Behind These Mountains by Klaus Pillon, made with Blender and Photoshop:

格鲁米尔 by Chen Zh, made with Blender and Photoshop:

The last months Malte Steiner expanded his knowledge of analog electronics, researched and build a modular synthesizer system. The idea is to create a cheap, repairable system which one would check in during a flight and drag onto stage. The most expensive is actually the suitcase, the whole system is around 500.-€ instead of the 2000.- to 3000.- € a comparable Eurorack suitcase would cost.

The GStreamer team is pleased to announce another bug fix release in the new stable 1.24 release series of your favourite cross-platform multimedia framework!

This release only contains bugfixes and security fixes.

It should be safe to update from 1.24.x, and we would recommend you update at your earliest convenience.

Highlighted bugfixes:

• More than 40 security fixes across a wide range of elements following an audit by the GitHub Security Lab, including the MP4, Matroska, Ogg and WAV demuxers, subtitle parsers, image decoders, audio decoders and the id3v2 tag parser
• avviddec: Fix regression that could trigger assertions about width/height mismatches
• appsink and appsrc fixes
• closed caption handling fixes
• decodebin3 and urisourcebin fixes
• glupload: dmabuf: Fix emulated tiled import
• level: fix LevelMeta values outside of the stated range
• mpegtsmux, flvmux: fix potential busy looping with high cpu usage in live mode
• pipeline dot file graph generation improvements
• qt(6): fix criticals with multiple qml(6)gl{src,sink}
• rtspsrc: Optionally timestamp RTP packets with their receive times in TCP/HTTP mode to enable clock drift handling
• splitmuxsrc: reduce number of file descriptors used
• systemclock: locking order fixes
• v4l2: fix possible v4l2videodec deadlock on shutdown; 8-bit bayer format fixes
• x265: Fix build with libx265 version >= 4.1 after masteringDisplayColorVolume API change
• macOS: fix rendering artifacts in retina displays, plus ptp clock fixes
• cargo: Default to thin lto for the release profile (for faster builds with lower memory requirements)
• Various bug fixes, build fixes, memory leak fixes, and other stability and reliability improvements
• Translation updates

See the GStreamer 1.24.10 release notes for more details.

Binaries for Android, iOS, Mac OS X and Windows will be available shortly.

You might think that visualizing music with lasers would be a complicated and difficult affair. In fact, it’s remarkably simple if you want it to be, and [byte_thrasher] shows us just how easy it can be.

At heart, what you’re trying to do is make a laser trace out waveforms of the music you’re listening to, right? So you just need a way to move the laser’s beam along with the sound waves from whatever you’re listening to. You might be thinking about putting a laser on the head of a servo-operated platform fed movement instructions from a digital music file, but you’d be way over-complicating things. You already have something that moves with the music you play — a speaker!

[byte_thrasher’s] concept is simple. Get a Bluetooth speaker, and stick it in a bowl. Cover the bowl with a flexible membrane, like plastic wrap. Stick a small piece of mirror on the plastic. When you play music with the speaker, the mirror will vibrate and move in turn. All you then have to do is aim a safe laser in a safe direction such that it bounces off the mirror and projects on to a surface. Then, the laser will dance with your tunes, and it’ll probably look pretty cool!

We’ve seen some beautiful laser visual effects before, too. Just be careful and keep your power levels safe and your beams pointing where they should be.

put a bluetooth speaker in a bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap pulled taut, glue a shard of mirror to the plastic wrap, point a laser beam at the mirror so that it bounces off towards the ceiling, play music, enjoy pic.twitter.com/Vs6lBJihCg

— avi (@byte_thrasher) November 9, 2024

As most git users are aware, the default branch name in git changed from master to main a while ago. Since I maintain projects created both before and after this change, some maintenance tasks have become more difficult to automate as a result (and I'm a sucker for consistency).

I put off dealing with this because I was planning to make master branches disappear at the same time APIs are broken, but that wasn't a good idea for several reasons beyond the scope of this post. So, I've changed all of my personal projects, and all projects maintained under the LV2 umbrella, to use main.

If you're tracking any of those repositories, maintain packaging infrastructure, or similar, please update your local trees and/or configuration accordingly. It's best to rename the local branch with git, since this preserves your local reftree and avoids accidental use of the old name:

git branch -m master main

The GStreamer team is pleased to announce another bug fix release in the new stable 1.24 release series of your favourite cross-platform multimedia framework!

This release only contains bugfixes and a security fix and it should be safe to update from 1.24.x.

Highlighted bugfixes:

• gst-rtsp-server security fix
• GstAggregator start time selection and latency query fixes for force-live mode
• audioconvert: fix dynamic handling of mix matrix, and accept custom upstream event for setting one
• encodebin: fix parser selection for encoders that support multiple codecs
• flvmux improvments for pipelines where timestamps don't start at 0
• glcontext: egl: Unrestrict the support base DRM formats
• kms: Add IMX-DCSS auto-detection in sink and fix stride with planar formats in allocator
• macOS main application event loop fixes
• mpegtsdemux: Handle PTS/DTS wraparound with ignore-pcr=true
• playbin3, decodebin3, parsebin, urisourcebin: fix races, and improve stability and stream-collection handling
• rtpmanager: fix early RTCP SR generation for sparse streams like metadata
• qml6glsrc: Reduce capture delay
• qtdemux: fix parsing of rotation matrix with 180 degree rotation
• rtpav1depay: added wait-for-keyframe and request-keyframe properties
• srt: make work with newer libsrt versions and don't re-connect on authentication failure
• v4l2 fixes and improvement
• webrtcsink, webrtcbin and whepsrc fixes
• cerbero: fix Python 3.13 compatibility, g-i with newer setuptools, bootstrap on Arch Linux; iOS build fixes
• Ship qroverlay plugin in binary packages
• Various bug fixes, memory leak fixes, and other stability and reliability improvements

See the GStreamer 1.24.9 release notes for more details.

Binaries for Android, iOS, Mac OS X and Windows will be available shortly.

The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu Studio 24.10 code-named “Oracular Oriole”. This marks Ubuntu Studio’s 35th release. This release is a Regular release and as such, it is supported for 9 months, until July 2025.

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 more complete list of changes and known issues. Listed here are some of the major highlights.

You can download Ubuntu Studio 24.10 from our download page.

Special Notes

The Ubuntu Studio 24.10 disk image (ISO) exceeds 4 GB and cannot be downloaded to some file systems such as FAT32 and may not be readable when burned to a standard DVD. For this reason, we recommend downloading to a compatible file system. When creating a boot medium, we recommend creating a bootable USB stick with the ISO image or burning to a Dual-Layer DVD.

Minimum installation media requirements: Dual-Layer DVD or 8GB USB drive.

Images can be obtained from this link: https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/24.10/release/

Full updated information, including Upgrade Instructions, are available in the Release Notes.

Upgrades from 24.04 LTS should be enabled within a month after release, so we appreciate your patience.

New This Release

Minimal Installation

We have now implemented minimal installations in the system installer. This will let you install a minimal desktop to get going and then install what you need via Ubuntu Studio Installer. This will make a faster installation process and lets you customize what you need for your personal Studio.

Unfortunately, at least for the time being, we also had to get rid of the default shortcuts in the panel since it would cause an error when loading without the applications being installed. A solution for this is coming in 25.04.

Generic Kernel

The Generic Ubuntu Kernel is now fully capable of low-latency workloads. As such, with this release, we have switched from the LowLatency Kernel to the Generic Kernel with the boot options to enable the low-latency configuration enabled by default.

These options can be changed via Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration and customized depending on your use-case and your workload. If you don’t need the low-latency and wish to have a computer that is more energy-efficient, you may wish to turn off all three options. The choice is yours.

Plasma 6

Ubuntu Studio, in cooperation with Kubuntu, switched to Plasma 6 this cycle. This switch was not without issues, so we expect many of the issues to be Plasma 6 related, especially when it comes to the default configuration and theming.

New Look

Ubuntu Studio had been using the same theming, “Materia” (except for the 22.04 LTS release which was a re-colored Breeze theme) since 19.04. However, Materia has gone dead upstream. To stay consistent, we found a fork called “Orchis” which seems to match closely and have switched to that.

As you can see from the screenshot, it has more vivid colors, round corners, and a more modern look. We hope you enjoy it. We are aware of a bug involving a dark bar under windows which may be an issue, but sometimes switching the window decorations to another variation of the theme is a solution.

PipeWire 1.2.4

This release contains PipeWire 1.2. With PipeWire 1.2, FireWire devices requiring FFADO are supported. Do note that the Ubuntu Studio team does not have any FireWire devices and could not test this.

PipeWire’s JACK compatibility is configured to use out-of-the-box and is zero-latency internally. System latency is configurable via Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration.

However, if you would rather use straight JACK 2 instead, that’s also possible. Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration can disable and enable PipeWire’s JACK compatibility on-the-fly. From there, you can simply use JACK via QJackCtl.

Complete Deprecation of PulseAudio/JACK setup/Studio Controls

Due to the maturity of PipeWire, the traditional PulseAudio/JACK setup, where JACK would be started/stopped by Studio Controls and bridged to PulseAudio, is now fully deprecated and the option is not offered anymore. This configuration is no longer installable via Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration. Studio Controls may return someday as a PipeWire fine-tuning solution, but for now it is unsupported by the developer.

Ardour 8.6

While this does not represent the latest release of Ardour, Ardour 8.6 is a great release. If you would like the latest release, we highly recommend purchasing one-time or subscribing to Ardour directly from the developers to help support this wonderful application.

To help support Ardour’s funding, you may obtain later versions directly from ardour.org. To do so, please one-time purchase or subscribe to Ardour from their website. If you wish to get later versions of Ardour from us, you will have to wait until the next regular release of Ubuntu Studio, due in April 2025.

Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration

Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration’s Dummy Audio Device now also has a much-requested Dummy Audio Input.

Additionally as described above, Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration has an option to configure the default boot parameters that are commonly used to enable the low-latency capabilities of the Linux kernel used in Ubuntu. For more information about that, see the Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration page.

We’re back on Matrix

You’ll notice that the menu links to our support chat and on our website will now take you to a Matrix chat. This is due to the Ubuntu community carving its own space within the Matrix federation.

However, this is not only a support chat. This is also a creativity discussion chat. You can pass ideas to each other and you’re welcome to it if the topic remains within those confines. However, if a moderator or admin warns you that you’re getting off-topic (or the intention for the chat room), please heed the warning.

This is a persistent connection, meaning if you close the window (or chat), it won’t lose your place as you may only need to sign back in to resume the chat.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does Ubuntu Studio contain snaps?
A: Yes. Mozilla’s distribution agreement with Canonical changed, and Ubuntu was forced to no longer distribute Firefox in a native .deb package. We have found that, after numerous improvements, Firefox now performs just as well as the native .deb package did.

Thunderbird also became a snap so that the maintainers can get security patches delivered faster.

Additionally, Freeshow is an Electron-based application. Electron-based applications cannot be packaged in the Ubuntu repositories in that they cannot be packaged in a traditional Debian source package. While such apps do have a build system to create a .deb binary package, it circumvents the source package build system in Launchpad, which is required when packaging for Ubuntu. However, Electron apps also have a facility for creating snaps, which can be uploaded and included. Therefore, for Freeshow to be included in Ubuntu Studio, it had to be packaged as a snap.

We have additional snaps that are Ubuntu-specific, such as the Firmware Updater and the Security Center. Contrary to popular myth, Ubuntu does not have any plans to switch all packages to snaps, nor do we.

Q: Will you make an ISO with {my favorite desktop environment}?
A: To do so would require creating an entirely new flavor of Ubuntu, which would require going through the Official Ubuntu Flavor application process. Since we’re completely volunteer-run, we don’t have the time or resources to do this. Instead, we recommend you download the official flavor for the desktop environment of your choice and use Ubuntu Studio Installer to get Ubuntu Studio – which does *not* convert that flavor to Ubuntu Studio but adds its benefits.

Q: What if I don’t want all these packages installed on my machine?
A: Simply use the Ubuntu Studio Installer to remove the features of Ubuntu Studio you don’t want or need!

Get Involved!

A wonderful way to contribute is to get involved with the project directly! We’re always looking for new volunteers to help with packaging, documentation, tutorials, user support, and MORE! Check out all the ways you can contribute!

Our project leader, Erich Eickmeyer, is now working on Ubuntu Studio at least part-time, and is hoping that the users of Ubuntu Studio can give enough to generate a monthly part-time income. We’re not there, but if every Ubuntu Studio user donated monthly, we’d be there! Your donations are appreciated! If other distributions can do it, surely we can! See the sidebar for ways to give!

Special Thanks

Huge special thanks for this release go to:

• Eylul Dogruel: Artwork, Graphics Design
• Ross Gammon: Upstream Debian Developer, Testing, Email Support
• Sebastien Ramacher: Upstream Debian Developer
• Dennis Braun: Upstream Debian Developer
• Rik Mills: Kubuntu Council Member, help with Plasma desktop
• Scarlett Moore: Kubuntu Project Lead, help with Plasma desktop
• Cristian Delgado: Translations for Ubuntu Studio Menu
• Dan Bungert: Subiquity, seed fixes
• Len Ovens: Testing, insight
• Wim Taymans: Creator of PipeWire
• Mauro Gaspari: Tutorials, Promotion, and Documentation, Testing, keeping Erich sane
• Krytarik Raido: IRC Moderator, Mailing List Moderator
• Erich Eickmeyer: Project Leader, Packaging, Development, Direction, Treasurer

It’s 2024. You’ve probably got one or more pairs of wireless headphones around the house. [Barnso] prefers wired headphones with a long cable, but he also decries the fact that it often gets tangled in his chair. The solution? A pulley system to make everything easier.

The concept is simple. [Barnso]’s system uses three pulleys. The headphone cable goes to the PC, and then runs over the first pulley. It then runs under a second pulley which is free to move, but weighted so that it naturally wants to fall down under gravity. The cable then comes back up over a third pulley, and then runs to the headphones on [Barnso]’s head. Basically, it’s a super simple cable retraction mechanism that keeps the long headphone cable organized and in one place.

It’s nice to see a simple mechanism that makes life easier, particularly one that solves a problem so many of us have faced in real life. The construction shown in the video is almost (intentionally?) maddeningly hacky but it does the job. If you prefer to go wireless, though, we can show you how to do that too.

The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the beta release of Ubuntu Studio 24.10, codenamed “Oracular Oriole”.

While this beta is reasonably free of any showstopper installer bugs, you will find some bugs within. This image is, however, mostly representative of what you will find when Ubuntu Studio 24.10 is released on October 10, 2024.

Special Notes

The Ubuntu Studio 24.10 image (ISO) exceeds 4 GB and cannot be downloaded to some file systems such as FAT32 and may not be readable when burned to a DVD. For this reason, we recommend downloading to a compatible file system. When creating a boot medium, we recommend creating a bootable USB stick with the ISO image or burning to a Dual-Layer DVD.

Images can be obtained from this link: https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/24.10/beta/

Full updated information, including Upgrade Instructions, are available in the Release Notes.

New Features This Release

• Plasma 6.1 is now the default desktop environment, an upgrade from Plasma 5.27. This may have some unknown bugs that we’re ironing out as we go along, along with theming.
• Ubuntu’s Generic Kernel is now capable of the same low latency processing as Ubuntu’s lowlatency kernel when certain boot parameters are used. Additionally, the lowlatency kernel is eventually going to be deprecated. With this in mind, we have switched to the generic kernel with the low latency boot parameters enabled by default. These boot parameters can be tweaked in Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuation.
• Minimal Install Option for new installations. This allows users to install Ubuntu Studio and customize what they need later with Ubuntu Studio Installer.
• Orchis is now our default theme, which replaces Materia, our default theme since 19.04. Materia has stopped development, so we decided to
• PipeWire continues to improve with every release and now includes FFADO support. Version 1.2.3
• Ubuntu Studio Installer‘s included Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration utility for fine-tuning the PipeWire setup now includes the ability to create or remove a dummy audio input device. Version 1.30
• The legacy PulseAudio/JACK has been deprecated and discontinued, is no longer supported, and is no longer an option to use. Going forward, PipeWire or JACK are the only options. PipeWire’s JACK integration can be disabled from Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration to use JACK by itself with QJackCtl, or via other means.

Major Package Upgrades

• Ardour version 8.6.0
• Qtractor version 1.1
• OBS Studio version 30.2.3
• Audacity version 3.6.1
• digiKam version 8.4.0
• Kdenlive version 24.08.1
• Krita version 5.2.3

There are many other improvements, too numerous to list here. We encourage you to look around the freely-downloadable ISO image.

Known Issues

• Due to the transition to Plasma 6 and Qt6, there may be some theming inconsistencies, especially for those upgrading. To work around these issues, reapply the default theme using System Settings and select “Orchis-dark” from Kvantum Manager.
• Some graphics cards might find the transparency in the Orchis theme difficult to work with. For that reason, you can switch to “Orchis-dark-solid” in the Kvantum Manager. Feedback is welcome, and if the transparency becomes too burdensome, we can switch to the solid theme by default.
• The new minimal install mode will not load the desktop properly with the extra icons (gimp, krita, patchance, etc.) in the top bar, so those had to be removed by default. If you find them useful, you can add them by right-clicking in the menu and clicking “Pin to Task Manager”. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Official Ubuntu Studio release notes can be found at https://ubuntustudio.org/ubuntu-studio-24-10-release-notes/

Further known issues, mostly pertaining to the desktop environment, can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OracularOriole/ReleaseNotes/Kubuntu

Additionally, the main Ubuntu release notes contain more generic issues: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/oracular-oriole-release-notes/44878

How You Can Help

Please test using the test cases on https://iso.qa.ubuntu.com. All you need is a Launchpad account to get started.

Additionally, we need financial contributions. Our project lead, Erich Eickmeyer, is working long hours on this project and trying to generate a part-time income. Go here to see how you can contribute financially (options are also in the sidebar).

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does Ubuntu Studio contain snaps?
A: Yes. Mozilla’s distribution agreement with Canonical changed, and Ubuntu was forced to no longer distribute Firefox in a native .deb package. We have found that, after numerous improvements, Firefox now performs just as well as the native .deb package did.

Thunderbird is also a snap this cycle in order for the maintainers to get security patches delivered faster.

Additionally, Freeshow is an Electron-based application. Electron-based applications cannot be packaged in the Ubuntu repositories in that they cannot be packaged in a traditional Debian source package. While such apps do have a build system to create a .deb binary package, it circumvents the source package build system in Launchpad, which is required when packaging for Ubuntu. However, Electron apps also have a facility for creating snaps, which can be uploaded and included. Therefore, for Freeshow to be included in Ubuntu Studio, it had to be packaged as a snap.

Also, to keep theming consistent, all included themes are snapped in addition to the included .deb versions so that snaps stay consistent with out themes.

We are working with Canonical to make sure that the quality of snaps goes up with each release, so we please ask that you give snaps a chance instead of writing them off completely.

Q: If I install this Beta release, will I have to reinstall when the final release comes out?
A: No. If you keep it updated, your installation will automatically become the final release. However, if Audacity returns to the Ubuntu repositories before final release, then you might end-up with a double-installation of Audacity. Removal instructions of one or the other will be made available in a future post.

Q: Will you make an ISO with {my favorite desktop environment}?
A: To do so would require creating an entirely new flavor of Ubuntu, which would require going through the Official Ubuntu Flavor application process. Since we’re completely volunteer-run, we don’t have the time or resources to do this. Instead, we recommend you download the official flavor for the desktop environment of your choice and use Ubuntu Studio Installer to get Ubuntu Studio – which does *not* convert that flavor to Ubuntu Studio but adds its benefits.

Q: What if I don’t want all these packages installed on my machine?
A: We now include a minimal install option. Install using the minimal install option, then use Ubuntu Studio Installer to install what you need for your very own content creation studio.