planet.linuxaudio.org

As should be obvious from browsing our website for any amount of time, Ubuntu Studio releases a Long-Term Support (LTS) release every two years. The latest LTS release happens to be our latest release: 26.04. What’s more is we just released 26.04.1, a roll-up of bugfixes and security updates, on August 27th.

Also announced is the “Butllet-Proof” KDE Initiative, where Kubuntu Focus, Techpaladin Software, and KDE e.V. are working together to make Plasma 6.6, along with KDE Frameworks, an LTS release as well. This means that Techpaladin, Kubuntu, and Kubuntu Focus will be working to fix bugs in the version of the desktop environment and back-end libraries released in Ubuntu Studio 26.04 LTS. This means that, while Kubuntu will be primarily working on the Stable Release Updates as provided by KDE, Ubuntu Studio uses the same packages that get these updates.

Our project leader, Erich Eickmeyer, has been doing what he can to help support Kubuntu with this task from his side, while the Ubuntu Studio team (including Erich) focuses on bug fixes to the multimedia applications included with their own Stable Release Updates for the life of 26.04, which is three years total until April 2029.

That, combined with Ubuntu Pro (free for every user up to 5 simultaneous machines) means you will not only receive bugfixes better than in the past, which was done at best effort, but also benefit from the security updates provided by Canonical. Yes, even Ubuntu Studio can use Ubuntu Pro. Do note that Ubuntu Pro will not extend the support time period for Ubuntu Studio, but give the added benefit of sponsored security updates.

If you would like to help with everything Ubuntu Studio has going on, from supporting the LTS to supporting the upcoming 26.10 release due in October, please feel free to join us!

Additionally, while there was an initial jump in monetary support following the 26.04 LTS release, it has dropped-off considerably. Please consider becoming a monthly monetary contributor to help support this project. Remember, our website now has a monthly cost along with the usual cost of packaging and development. If you cannot commit to a monthly monetary contribution, please consider at least a one-time contribution, even if you’ve given before. Even if it’s just a tank of petrol! For those already giving, thank you so much for your continued support. It means the world to us, and allows us to continue giving you and others this operating system for free! You’ve helped countless people throughout the world!

Vee One Suite 1.4.3 - A Late-Summer'26 Release rncbc Tue, 1 Sep 2026 - 17:00

Add new comment

About the GStreamer Conference

The GStreamer Conference 2026 GStreamer Conference will take place on Saturday-Sunday 10-11 October 2026 in Prague, Czech Republic.

It is a conference for developers, community members, decision-makers, industry partners, researchers, students and anyone else interested in the GStreamer multimedia framework or Open Source and cross-platform multimedia.

There will also be a hackfest just after the conference.

You can find more details about the conference on the GStreamer Conference 2026 web site.

Call for Presentations is open

The call for presentations is now open for talk proposals and lightning talks. Please submit your talk now!

Talks can be on almost anything multimedia related, ranging from talks about applications to challenges in the lower levels in the stack or hardware.

We want to hear from you, what you are working on, what you are using GStreamer for, what difficulties you have encountered and how you solved them, what your plans are, what you like, what you dislike, how to improve things!

Please submit all proposals through the GStreamer Conference 2026 Talk Submission Portal.

In September Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen and Malte Steiner are going to be artists-in-residency at Life on a Leaf in Turku in Finland. It starts with open house the 5. and 6. September, on 5. September they perform at 14:00 the TMS piece Occurrences and on the 6. they have artist talks starting on 14:00.

They work on new pieces in September and going to present results at the end of the residency.

https://www.lifeonaleaf.fi/en/events

The GStreamer team is pleased to announce another release of liborc, the Optimized Inner Loop Runtime Compiler, which is used for SIMD acceleration in GStreamer plugins such as audioconvert, audiomixer, compositor, videoscale, and videoconvert, to name just a few.

This release contains both bug fixes and new features.

Highlights:

• Add AVX512 support
• neon: add divluw rule (used in GStreamer's compositor, videomixer, gaudieffects and alpha-blending code paths)
• neon: add mulslq, mululq rules, shlq, shrsq, shruq (used in GStreamer's audio processing element)
• orccodemem: Invalidate code chunks when recycling for QEMU
• orcprogram-c: Allow negative constants
• arm, neon: Split ARM and NEON logic into 32-bit and 64-bit
• RISC-V: many fixes and enhancements, including some new rules
• LoongArch: various fixes and enhancements
• OpenBSD/FreeBSD improvements
• Miscellaneous fixes
• ci fixes

Direct tarball download: orc-0.4.43.tar.xz.

It’s technically true that any piece of software can be reproduced in hardware, although modern software’s size and complexity generally makes this a non-starter. But if we go far enough back in time, older software becomes easier and easier to implement in hardware. The original DOOM from 1993 might one day be recreated in full this way, but that day is not today. Instead, [Nick] has recreated the original music from that game, playing the opening track in nothing but 555 timers.

The circuit starts with a 555 timer that acts as a system clock with a rate of just over 7 Hz. These pulses feed a binary counter which in turn feeds a decoder, giving the circuit 15 positions. Each output of the decoder feeds to a diode matrix which stores information about what pitch the circuit should play. The circuit only needs to play six pitches so the diodes effectively connect each moment in time to one of these six notes. From there the circuit feeds into a set of switches which select different resistor networks of another 555 which is actually responsible for producing sound. The resistor networks have different values to adjust the timing of the 555 to produce different pitches.

Of course this entire exercise is largely academic as almost any microcontroller would be able to be programmed to play this chiptune quite easily, but it’s not a bad idea to get down into the weeds of digital logic from time to time in order to refine one’s skills and knowledge about what’s really going on in the inner workings of circuits. Or, go even deeper than that and build the logic gates themselves from first principles.

The Elektronengehirn Hardware concert 8. November 2025 at Galleri Niemi Aalborg (DK):

qpwgraph v1.0.4 - A Mid-Summer'26 Release rncbc Wed, 26 Aug 2026 - 17:00

Add new comment

A new release of gst123, my commandline media player based on GStreamer is available. The main new “feature” is probably that it now can play videos without crashing on Wayland, although it still relies on Xwayland to do so. See release link for full list of changes.

[David] has a young child who is clever enough to use a computer to play music, but he doesn’t quite want to hand over the mouse just yet. Thus, he set about building an electronic music player that could be operated in an altogether simpler fashion. 

The build is based around an Arduino Nano — its job is to read RFID tags via an RC522 reader, with the tags themselves embedded in a series of small dolls belonging to [David]’s daughter. Upon reading the tag, the Arduino Nano chats over serial with a DFPlayer Mini module, which reads a playlist of MP3 files off of an SD card and plays them over a small 4 ohm speaker that [David] had laying around. It’s a simple build, with the components all neatly wrapped up in a handsome wooden case with a volume control and a skip button for if any one song becomes too annoying for a repeat listen.

We’ve featured other builds in this vein before, too. There’s something satisfying about a music player with such a simple interface—no delicate media to fiddle with, just pop the toy on top and get the playlist you were looking for. If you’re creating your own little musical builds at home, we’d love to see them on the tipsline.

If you don’t like unauthorized hacking, this isn’t for you. If you don’t like things built with AI-assisted coding agents, this isn’t for you. But if you’re up for a very unofficial hack that gives you full takeover access to Push 3’s display, drives, MIDI, and more, Federico Pepe has just unveiled Push Hack. Here’s […]

The post Push Hack, very unauthorized access to Push 3’s display, files, MIDI, and more appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

Khyam Allami presented his long-term research project in Beirut yesterday, and it's an exciting one. Hundreds of tuning systems, ajnās, and maqāmāt are now in a free, open archive, and there's a free MIDI plug-in that lets you apply tunings (and tweak them by ear) across all major software tuning formats.

The post Digital Arabic Maqām Archive and open-source MIDI plug-in now available appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

As of July 9, 2026, all flavors of Ubuntu 25.10, including Ubuntu Studio 25.10, codenamed “Questing Quokka”, have reached end-of-life (EOL). There will be no more updates of any kind, including security updates, for this release of Ubuntu.

If you have not already done so, please upgrade to Ubuntu Studio 26.04 LTS via the instructions provided here. If you do not do so as soon as possible, you will lose the ability without additional advanced configuration.

No single release of any operating system can be supported indefinitely, and Ubuntu Studio has no exception to this rule.

Interim Ubuntu releases, meaning those that are between the Long-Term Support releases, are supported for 9 months and users are expected to upgrade after every release with a 3-month buffer following each release.

Long-Term Support releases are identified by an even numbered year-of-release and a month-of-release of April (04). Hence, the most recent Long-Term Support release is 26.04 (YY.MM = 2026.April), and the next Long-Term Support release will be 28.04 (2028.April). LTS releases for official Ubuntu flavors (not Desktop or Server which are supported for five years) are three years, meaning LTS users are expected to upgrade after every LTS release with a one-year buffer.

MDA.lv2 1.2.12 has been released. This is a port of the MDA VST plugins to LV2.

Changes:

• Avoid over-use of yielding meson options
• Fix build with MSVC 2022
• Fix strict aliasing violation
• Fix use of uninitialized values in TalkBox
• Improve const-correctness
• Remove development symbols from modules by default
• Use a deterministic and more uniform RNG

Jalv 1.10.0 has been released. Jalv (JAck LV2) is a simple host for LV2 plugins. It runs a plugin, and exposes the plugin ports to the system, essentially making the plugin an application. For more information, see http://drobilla.net/software/jalv.

Changes:

• Add block length command-line parameter for PortAudio
• Fix PortAudio backend
• Fix crash with plugins that have non-event inputs
• Fix stale parameter descriptions in man pages
• Fully implement fixedBlockLength and powerOf2BlockLength
• Gracefully handle failure to open audio backend in Gtk interface
• Update meson fallback subproject wrap files

In 2018 I recreated this blog with an SSG (Static Site Generator) in Python based on pandoc (asciidoctor for older pages), git timestamps and Jinja2 templates. Even though it cached pandoc invocations, building still took too long for my taste and lately I didn’t really feel at ease with modifying…

Geoffrey D. Bennett has just released a major update of ALSA Scarlett GUI, a control program for Focusrite’s Scarlett, Clarett, and Vocaster audio interfaces.

DSP control

For Vocaster One and Two, Geoffrey added controls for the built-in DSP that includes a pre-compressor filter, a compressor, and a parametric EQ.

The controls on the pre-compressor filter and parametric EQ graphs are interactive: you can pick handles and move them around (Q can only be edited numerically though, it seems).

You can also choose between 12 filter types:

Configuration

This is another new window where you can toggle the visibility of unused channels, set stereo linking, and give custom names to inputs and outputs.

In addition, you can set the target level for the Autogain feature.

For models with larger number of IOs (think Gen4 18i20), this is also where you control monitor groups:

Routing window updates

There have been some improvements here:

• Routing lines now display a real-time glow effect that reflects the audio signal level passing through the connection.
• When a routing connection has a hidden port, there’s an arrow indicator at the visible end now.
• Adjacent stereo-linked channels are now displayed as a single stereo port.
• On 4th Gen 16i16/18i16/18i20 interfaces with monitor groups configured, the routing window now shows the effective audio routing.

Mixer window updates

Just like Routing, the Mixer window got its share of UX/UI updates:

• Mixer input and output labels now display a real-time horizontal glow bar that reflects the signal level at that port.
• Gain knobs now include a signal level meter inside the dial (except for Gen1 devices that don’t support it).
• When channels are stereo-linked, the mixer displays them as a single stereo fader.

Presets

You can now save and restore presets from the main window.

Firmware update changes

For the 4gen devices with larger number of IOs, the program now support multi-step firmware upgrade: leapfrog, then ESP, then application.

Device support

The changes mainly affect the “big 4gen” devices and Vocaster units:

• Scarlett Big 4th Gen (16i16, 18i16, 18i20) support now includes hardware identification, monitor groups, input mute, and output volume/mute/dim controls.
• Vocaster interfaces now have dedicated mute controls for speaker and headphone outputs in the main window.

For more detailed info, please see release notes.

Google has just published the list of students accepted into the Google Summer of Code 2026 program.

Some of the teams usually participating are off this year: Krita and Inkscape are temporarily out of mentors. Let’s take a look at the rest of them.

GIMP

Akascape will completely revamp the keyboard shortcuts configuration dialog and add support for importing and exporting presets, as well as support for multiple shortcuts per action.

blezecon will work on creating an automated infrastructure for validating, publishing, and distributing GIMP extensions.

v4vansh will update GIMP’s text engine to use HarfBuzz directly to extract font data, so that you have better control over formatting and access to various OpenType features.

Waris Maqbool will create PSD-compatible gegl:inner-glow and gegl:bevel operations to use in the PSD importer. They will also port the legacy Sharpen to make it a GEGL meta-operation.

Graphite

This vector/bitmap editor is still relatively unknown, and yet this isn’t the first time they are GSoC participants.

∅space will add currently missing support for SVG features like gradients, patterns, and a text-on-path. They will also create a fallback system so that currently unsupported (as in editing) features would be rasterized and imported as bitmaps.

Ayush Amawate will refactor the on-canvas gizmo code to remove duplicated code and add reusable gizmos (slider, dial, angle) for shape-drawing tools.

Bunnyy aims to improve the text functionality: add a lorem ipsum generator, formatting spans and typographical parameters, text on path, commands to enforce lower-/upper-/title-casing, hyphenation, font fallbacks, flows between text areas, ligatures and vertical typing toggles, and so on.

Timon Schelling will be adding a GPU-accelerated brush engine. The plan is to introduce non-destructive, resolution-independent stroke rendering with support for stylus pressure and tilt.

Yohei Yamasaki will refactor Graphite to create a more generalized graphic representation of paints (colors, gradients, patterns, etc.) as ordinary layers. The net outcome will be dedicated Gradient and Pattern nodes, as well as updated Fill and Stroke nodes.

Synfig

ahmedfathy0-0 will add a lattice-based free-form deformation layer to enable organic deformations like squash-and-stretch or facial movements.

Yukta will add per-character text animation support so that things like a typewriter effect are easy to achieve.

Digikam

Srirupa Datta will add an new interface to the database search engine and hook up a lightweight LLM to translate natural-language requests into the right combination of structured filters.

Blender

Bipin_ will be adding importing and exporting of OpenTimelineIO (.otio) files to VSE.

il4n will add handles to transitions such as crossfades in the VSE, so that users can move the transitions and change their length.

Criss-Ivana will port the following matrix & math utility nodes into the Compositor: Matrix SVD, Bit Math, Boolean Math, Integer Math, Compare, Float To Int, Hash Value, and Random Value.

Evan Luo will improve mesh smoothing by overcome fundamental limitations, such as volume shrinkage, no frequency selectivity, and selection boundary artifacts.

Henry Jiang will improve loop editing: add clone support for Edge Slide, implement edge loop adjustment via spline interpolation, and add loop cut curvature preservation.

Jerry Wei will improve the brush engine: add brush tip roundness for more brushes, customizable pressure curves for all pressure-sensitive parameters, customizable brush toggling and improved toggle display, etc.

Owen O’Malley will introduce the MaterialX standard node library into Blender’s shader editor as first-class native nodes.

Yogeshgouda_Patil will improve regression test coverage.

FreeCAD

Aymi will be working on bridging the 3rd-party Motion workbench with the FEM workbench to created animated multibody dynamics visualizations. It’s going to be a very challenging project, but she has great mentors on her side: long-time FEM contributor Mario Alexis and multi-body dynamics expert Aik-Siong Koh who is behind the assembly solver of FreeCAD and one of the two developers behind MbdFEM.

Morten Vajhøj will be overhauling the user experience in the TechDraw workbench. His focus will be on changing the way you annotate geometry: instead of selecting an object and then choosing the command you will now select what you want to do and then what to apply it to. This will bring TD in line with the rest of FreeCAD. Of course, applicable objects under the cursor will be highlighted, and inapplicable objects will be unavailable for the selected tool.

Nishendra Singh will attempt to revive and modernize the Robot workbench. This is going to be a colossal effort that, I’ve no doubt, will have to continue past the GSoC22026 deadline. This project’s scope is replacing CSV/DH file imports with URDF imports, exporting the joint & trajectory data, Orocos KDL kinematics library refresh (currently years behind the upstream), and updating the documentation.

Parag Debnath will integrate the buildingSMART Data Dictionary into the BIM workbench, so you can search and apply international classification standards from the cloud to selected IFC entities.

YashSuthar983 will create an initial version of the 3D parametric sketching workbench that could be later merged into the existing Sketcher workbench. For that, the student will extend the existing PlaneGCS solver to 3D by adding new primitives and spatial constraints.

Some of the students have been active in the project recently. Morten Vajhøj has 8 pull requests for the Measure tool merged. For YashSuthar983, 25 pull requests have already been merged (mainly around the core, Sketcher, and the Measure tool), another 5 PRs are open (for Sketcher, the Measure tool, and PartDesign).

BRL-CAD et al.

In the Google Summer of Code program, BRL-CAD is an umbrella organization comprised of OpenSCAD, IfcOpenShell, Bonsai BIM (formerly Blender BIM), and BRL-CAD itself.

AnshulPatil2005 will improve Manifold’s CI and benchmarking by adding missing determinism, sanitizer, and performance regression checks.

Bidyendu will add an optional AI assistant for OpenSCAD using either locally running models via Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible server, at user’s preference. The intention is to give users the ability to use the benefits of AI without compromising privacy.

RaghavSharma0125 will add an MCP server to BRL-CAD, so you can interact with the program through any external MCP client.

Kanchan Borole will improve the Geometry Verification and Validation (V&V) user interface in Arbalest, the Qt-based UI for BRL-CAD.

MYoder will enhance Bonsai BIM (formerly Blender BIM) with tools for BIM-type modeling of roadways using the IFC 4.3 schema. TThe scope of the project is vertical alignments (horizontal already implemented), cross-section profiles, and corridor generation.

Pitivi

The video editor has been participating at GSoC for years through the GNOME Foundation org. This year, Michael Calabrese will be rewriting the timeline ruler in GTK4/Rust to make it more robust.

Kdenlive

Yash Bavadiya will improve the UI for three parts of the program: create a tabbed per-channel widget for the Curves effect, implement a gradient editor with arbitrary draggable color stops, and add Bezier handle support on RemapView connector lines with easing presets for the Time Remapping panel.

Mixxx

Ayush Sah will rebuild the LateNight skin as a 100% native QML interface. This is supposed to reduce the CPU overhead and bring cleaner architecture.

Priyanshuwu will add PipeWire support so that audio can be freely routed. They will also attempt to achieve ALSA-comparable latency with the new audio backend.

GRAME

GRAME is not a very well-known org, but if you are into audio, you may have heard of Faust, a functional programming language for sound synthesis and audio processing. There are two very cool GSoC projects this year.

Blake North will be integrating Faust into Bespoke Synth. Essentially, you will be able to edit and run Faust programs in real-time.

Another student, Mithaniel V., will integrate Faust into the Godot game engine. There will be two deliverables: a Faust Godot extension and a command line tool to compile Faust programs into Godot native language statically.

More projects

I don’t usually cover VLC and FFmpeg, but they do have students this year as well.

If you are interested in astronomy and space exploration, check our OpenAstronomy and LibreCube projects.