Drawbacks of installing Ubuntu Studio 18.04?

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

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Linuxmusician01
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Re: Drawbacks of installing Ubuntu Studio 18.04?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

meinfretur wrote: I hadn't noticed that recent Ubuntu releases ditched Unity -- that's why I mentioned Xubuntu, because I seem to remember hating Unity when I tried it
Ha ha. That's why my next distro is going to be Ubuntu again. I hated Unity too.
meinfretur wrote:But I do agree with bhilmers: I don't want to be bothered with doing a lot of tweaking involving configuration files, command lines, etc., nor have I ever enjoyed dependency hell. I've gotten to the point where I can dabble in Bash scripts and such, but I prefer a distribution that does the under-the-hood stuff for me to one where I have to do it myself.
Personally, I don't think you'll have to go under the hood w/ Ubuntu either. I didn't do much "special" configuration either (I use Linux Mint which is based on Ubuntu). Important is that you use the KXStudio repo. If at all possible, try Ubuntu some time and I think you won't notice the difference. You say that you like Xfce. It's a lightweight desktop environment. A lot of config utilities look to me like they are straight from the Gnome deskt. envr., which is the standard DE in Ubuntu now a days.

I do not thing you need to do any tweaks. I wouldn't know what.
meinfretur wrote: As for merlyn's question about support, I was wondering the same thing. I could be wrong, but I would think it would be easier to answer questions from average users who have a system that installs a standard set of tweaks rather than ones who tweaked settings themselves, sometimes using outdated tutorials and possibly breaking things in the process.
Good point. But users that use distro's like that tend to do that because they're not very experienced in using Linux. So in the end you might end up depending on help from other people that don't know the ins and outs of Ubuntu Studio. :wink:

Anyway, good luck with using Linux! :)
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AlexTheBassist
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Re: Drawbacks of installing Ubuntu Studio 18.04?

Post by AlexTheBassist »

bhilmers wrote:It's a little bit more than just audio and I feel it probably qualifies as a separate distro. They have a custom installer that lets users pick different creative setups (audio/music production, graphics, photography, video, etc...) and there are some OS tweaks that are helpful for new people (it helped me when I was new).
Yeah, it's more than just audio, this is a huge mess also. I never saw an Ubuntu Studio setup working properly. It's a lot better to choose AVLinux or KXStudio over it, as they are working solutions. Both work like a charm once you set up JACK and needed bridges.
Being creative does not imply being lazy, stupid, or illiterate.

Working in Harrison Mixbus and Ardour on KDE Neon + KXStudio.
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langoring_composer
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Re: Drawbacks of installing Ubuntu Studio 18.04?

Post by langoring_composer »

I am still finding (over the past several increasing months/years) that it's good to choose the most minimal yet functional active and supported distro you can find (in your language). Make sure it's compatible with your system in terms of hardware and then implement the download. After that, install it in the simplest manner possible and then spend several consecutive hours and days pruning it down to what you need and installing the audio-specific tools that you need as well as the interface necessities (and the kernel stuff too).

It tends to be labor-intensive, yet it's a good way to learn.

I'm just recently recovered from a *total* loss of DAW and archives, but I pretty much reinstated one of my older system types and it seems likely to work.

I started out on Ubuntu Studio, but tried a handful of others after getting sick of Ubuntu Studio's creeping bloatware and the loss of the Ubuntu Studio and Multimedia sections on UbuntuForums.com Please correct me if I'm wrong about the specifics; I can't remember the specific forum subtitles because I quit going there after they ditched/archived their own content.

I used to have really good luck with Xubuntu and installing into it the linux lowlatency kernel for Ubuntu systems. I later tried the same thing on Lubuntu, and it might be more possible now, yet Lubuntu seems to occasionally be missing some items that I don't even know I need until realising that I can't accomplish something or the system breaks a little bit.

Lately, I feel that from reading the release notes and distro watch articles and other related Linux stuff, that Xubuntu had some serious rough patches lately along with Ubuntu Studio and the other Ubuntus. Also, there was that difficulty back in the day with the loss of some Graphics driver support. It wasn't tragic, but I got pretty upset that a brand new computer and even some old ones couldn't use their graphics at full potential because of the distro deprecation issues with AMD/ATI graphics and Xorg for a while. But that got me to consider Debian.

So I tried Debian for a while, but I can't stand it's installer so I still avoid it.
MX Linux was nice for a while, and it was fun running the AVLINUX RT kernels in it successfully, but I don't feel 100% comfortable with it these days because it's chart-topping distrowatch. That could make it more of a target, and I've already had to shutdown and reformat a couple of systems due to malware/hackers.

I got away with WattOS for a while too, and that would be really nice as it's derived from Ubuntu/Debian, but as it's lagging behind a bit, it's not quite secure for updates. Nevertheless, it has some specific advantages if you can tweak out the latency bugs and install a nice kernel extra because it's been whittled down in size and it's kinda like Lubuntu yet more like the other 'buntus.

I know this is a lot, but I don't know how else to put it.

Essentially, I find the best technique is too keep trying a variety of distros, and keep your backups and extra partitions handy.

Probably about 50% of the distros i tried turned out to be not quite what I wanted or they wouldn't even boot.
Yet a few of the distros that used to scare me away in an instant I now consider to be pretty much ideal. AVLINUX is probably the strongest choice, yet it's not quite for beginners nor the faint of heart. This is all just my weak opinion, of course.

Last but not least, be careful with the KX Studio repos because they aren't as well-supported as they used to be, and you might end up with some very very old .DEBs creeping into your modern system. I don't just assume that they work right away. It's good to nitpick. But they are still a wonderful resource and speed up the process of getting into better Linux Audio.

As long as you can weed out xruns (buffer underruns) and run some major DAW programs, it doesn't matter as much what you use if you can get your rendered audio material out of the system and into the hands/ears of people who like music.

I hope this helps. ( if it doesn't, there's always pro audio hardware :lol: )
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