Ubuntu Studio is a recognized flavorUbuntu Flavors
Canonical Ltd., Retrieved on 1 August 2013 of the

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

, which is geared to general

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...

production. The original version, based on Ubuntu 7.04, was released on 10 May 2007.

Features

Real-time kernel

The

real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learnin ...

, first included with Ubuntu Studio 8.04, was modified for intensive audio, video or graphics work. The 8.10 Ubuntu Studio release lacks this real-time kernel. It has been reimplemented in the 9.04 Ubuntu Studio release and stabilized with the release of 9.10. 10.04 Ubuntu Studio, in contrast, does not include the real-time kernel by default. As of version 10.10 of the Ubuntu Studio, the real-time kernel is no longer available in the repositories.

Low-latency kernel

As of Ubuntu Studio 12.04, the default kernel is linux-lowlatency, which in essence is a generic Ubuntu Linux kernel, with a tweaked configuration to allow for stable operation for audio applications at lower latencies. Since much of the real-time patch has now been implemented into the

vanilla Vanilla is a spice derived from orchids of the genus ''Vanilla (genus), Vanilla'', primarily obtained from pods of the Mexican species, flat-leaved vanilla (''Vanilla planifolia, V. planifolia''). Pollination is required to make the p ...

kernel, and considering the difficulties in maintaining linux-rt, Ubuntu Studio decided on using linux-lowlatency in its place. The scheduler allows applications to request immediate CPU time, which can drastically reduce audio latency. In 9.10, the "Ubuntu Studio Controls" provided under System>Administration permit the user to "Enable Nice", allowing the use of wireless networking and proprietary graphics cards drivers while maintaining low audio latency free of XRUNs (audio drop-outs) in

JACK Jack may refer to: Places * Jack, Alabama, US, an unincorporated community * Jack, Missouri, US, an unincorporated community * Jack County, Texas, a county in Texas, USA People and fictional characters * Jack (given name), a male given name, ...

. A more negative value entered for

nice Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative c ...

reserves more CPU time for real-time audio processes.

Appearance and sound theme

Ubuntu Studio also includes custom artwork and a blue-on-black theme, as opposed to Ubuntu's default purple and orange. As with the main distribution of Ubuntu, if an accelerated graphics card and appropriate driver are used, the advanced desktop effects can be enabled. More advanced Compiz effects are available in the Synaptic Package Manager (i.e., Ubuntu repositories). In Karmic 9.10, a fresh sound theme replaces the default Ubuntu theme, with a reverberating melody at startup, and an occasional knock or ping from a button or prompt. Xfce (instead of GNOME) was the default user interface until v20.04. From Ubuntu Studio 20.10, the default user interface became KDE.

Access to Ubuntu repositories

An important advantage of Ubuntu Studio over most other Linux distributions employing the real-time kernel is access to the same repositories available to the main Ubuntu distributions through the Update Manager, Synaptic Package Manager, as well as through the Add/Remove Applications prompt. This allows for much more frequent operating system updates, and access to a much wider range of software.

Installation

In the past there has been no

live Live may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Live!'' (2007 film), 2007 American film * ''Live'' (2014 film), a 2014 Japanese film *'' ''Live'' (Apocalyptica DVD) Music *Live (band), American alternative rock band * List of albums ...

version available of Ubuntu Studio, and no graphical installer. Since the 12.04 release, Ubuntu Studio has been available as a Live DVD. The disk image is about 1.8 GB, too large to fit on a standard CD, and as a result the recommended installation medium for Ubuntu Studio is a

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

USB flash drive A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since firs ...

. Ubuntu Studio can also be installed on a pre-existing Ubuntu installation by installing the "ubuntustudio-desktop" package from

Advanced Packaging Tool Advanced package tool, or APT, is a free-software user interface that works with core libraries to handle the installation and removal of software on Debian, and Debian-based Linux distributions. APT simplifies the process of managing software ...

. In 9.10, the package "ubuntustudio-audio," shown during installation (and also available in the Synaptic Package Manager), cannot be installed without a working Internet connection. An Internet connection is required after installation to maintain system components.

Software included

Audio

* a2jmidid – a2jmidid is a

daemon Daimon or Daemon (Ancient Greek: , "god", "godlike", "power", "fate") originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and mythology and of later Hellenistic religion and philosophy. The word ...

for exposing legacy ALSA sequencer applications in JACK MIDI system. * Ardour – version 4 of the hard disk recorder and digital audio workstation application (Works with

). *

Audacious Audacious may refer to: * ''Audacious'' (album), a 2016 album by Cupcakke * Audacious (software), an open-source media player Ships * List of ships named ''Audacious'' * HMS ''Audacious'', various ships of the British Royal Navy * ''Audaci ...

– a lightweight audio player. * Audacity – a digital audio editor application. * BEAST – music composition and modular synthesis application. * Creox – A real-time guitar effects program (works with JACK). *

FluidSynth FluidSynth, formerly named iiwusynth, is a free open source software synthesizer which converts MIDI note data into an audio signal using SoundFont technology without need for a SoundFont-compatible soundcard. FluidSynth can act as a virtual MID ...

with GUI QSynth – Software Wavetable Synthesizer (Works with JACK). *

Hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, an ...

– an advanced drum machine (Works with JACK). *

JACK Audio Connection Kit JACK Audio Connection Kit (or JACK; a recursive acronym) is a professional sound server Application programming interface, API and pair of daemon (computing), daemon implementations to provide real-time, low-latency connections for both audio and ...

– a sound server daemon that provides low latency connections between applications for both audio and MIDI data. * Jack Rack – Virtual rackmount of

LADSPA LADSPA is an acronym for Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API. It is an application programming interface (API) standard for handling audio filters and audio signal processing effects, licensed under LGPL-2.1-or-later. It was originally de ...

DSP effects plugins (Works with JACK). * JAMin – the JACK Audio Connection Kit Audio Mastering interface (Works with JACK). *

LilyPond LilyPond is a computer program and file format for music engraving. One of LilyPond's major goals is to produce scores that are engraved with traditional layout rules, reflecting the era when scores were engraved by hand. LilyPond is cross-pl ...

– a program for engraving sheet music *

MusE In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...

– a MIDI/Audio sequencer using

and ALSA * MuseScore – a music scorewriter for Linux,

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, and Mac * Patchage – GUI access to patch MIDI and Audio software together for JACK. *

Pure Data Pure Data (Pd) is a visual programming language developed by Miller Puckette in the 1990s for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works. While Puckette is the main author of the program, Pd is an open-source project with a large d ...

– a programming environment for multimedia (Works with Jack). * Tapiir – a software multitap delay with realtime audio I/O. (works with JACK). * Timemachine – Records the last 30 seconds of sound to the hard drive, so a 'one off' sound can be captured (Works with JACK). * TiMidity++ – a software synthesizer that is able to convert from MIDI to various formats. *

Xwax xwax is an open-source vinyl emulation software. It was initially developed in 2006 as proprietary software. In May 2007 xwax was licensed under the GPL-2.0-only, making it the first open source software of this kind. Unlike the software suppl ...

– a vinyl record emulator. * Yoshimi – based on ZynAddSubFX but improves audio and MIDI capabilities. JACK performance is also improved. ;Installable from the Software-Center: *

Mixxx Mixxx is free and open-source software for disk jockey, DJing.James, Daniel. "Drafting Digital Media". Apress, 2009, p. 213. It is cross-platform and supports most common music file formats. Mixxx can be controlled with MIDI and Human interface d ...

– a digital DJ - style mixing program. *

Rosegarden Rosegarden is a free software digital audio workstation program developed for Linux with ALSA and Qt4. It acts as an audio and MIDI sequencer, scorewriter and musical composition and editing tool. It is intended to be a free alternative to su ...

– a digital audio workstation program (works with JACK). Not included since release 12. *

ZynAddSubFX ZynAddSubFX (also now called Zyn-Fusion) is a free and open-source software synthesizer for Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. As of version 3, the completely new user interface is being released under proprietary terms with an open-source-ev ...

– a complex yet easy to use subtractive, additive, FM synthesizer with DSP effects, and exceptional software synthesizer. Works with JACK.

Video

Pitivi Pitivi (originally spelled PiTiVi) is a free and open-source non-linear video editor for Linux, developed by various contributors from free software community and the GNOME project, with support also available from Collabora. Pitivi is designed t ...

– a video editing program *

Kino Kino may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasters * KINO, a radio station in Arizona, U.S. * Kino FM (98.0 FM – Moscow), a Russian music radio station * KinoTV, now Ruutu+ Leffat ja Sarjat, a Finnish TV channel Fictional entities ...

– a non-linear digital video editor *

OpenShot OpenShot Video Editor is a free and open-source video editor for Windows, macOS, Linux, and ChromeOS. The project started in August 2008 by Jonathan Thomas, with the objective of providing a stable, free, and friendly to use video editor. The pr ...

- a simple, linear video editing program *

Kdenlive Kdenlive (; acronym for ''KDE Non-Linear Video Editor'') is a free and open-source video editing software based on the MLT Framework, KDE and Qt. The project was started by Jason Wood in 2002, and is now maintained by a small team of develope ...

- non-linear video editor by KDE (not referenced on website) * Stopmotion – a stop-motion animation movie creator *

VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desk ...

– a media player, was removed before 7.04 Feisty * Xjadeo – a simple video player that gets sync from JACK transport

Graphics

* Agave – a color scheme generator *

Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen appliance, kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsion, emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender ...

– a 3D animation program * Enblend – an image compositing program * FontForge – a typeface (font) editor program *

GIMP GIMP ( ; GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized task ...

– a raster graphics editor *

Hugin Hugin may refer to: * Bob Hugin (born 1954), American politician and businessman * Hugin (longship), a Danish reconstruction of a Viking longship on display in Ramsgate, England * HUGIN, a widely used tool for uncertain reasoning using Bayesian net ...

– photo stitching and HDR merging program *

Inkscape Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor used to create vector images, primarily in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. Other formats can be imported and exported. Inkscape can render primitive vector shapes (e.g. rectang ...

– a vector graphics editor *

Krita Krita ( ) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital art and 2D animation. The software runs on Windows, macOS, Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on th ...

– a free and open-source painting application *

Scribus Scribus () is free and open-source desktop publishing (DTP) software available for most desktop operating systems. It is designed for layout, typesetting, and preparation of files for professional-quality image-setting equipment. Scribus can a ...

– a desktop publishing application *

Synfig Synfig Studio (also known as Synfig) is a free and open-source vector-based 2D animation software. It is created by Robert Quattlebaum with additional contributions by Adrian Bentley. Synfig began as the custom animation platform for Voria Stu ...

– a 2D

vector graphics Vector graphics is a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector display a ...

and timeline-based animation program

References

External links

Ubuntu Studio homepage

Ubuntu Studio applications

Ubuntu Wiki

(21 July 2007) * {{FOSS Linux media creation distributions Ubuntu derivatives Linux distributions de:Ubuntu#Ubuntu Studio