I’ve been searching around for the right linux raft I need to jump off of the sinking microsoft ship, and I am currently considering giving Ubuntu Studio a go. My primary activities are music production and gaming, so the massive number of creative tools that are available seem like it would really level up my music production game, and possibly inspire me to try out some other creative avenues as well. It’s kind of amazing to see the possibilities with all the free software out there these days.
So, does anyone use Ubuntu Studio, and do you have any tips or any things to watch out for as far as quirks? Would this be a good option as a first install, or should I go with something else?
Ubuntu, broadly, is usually a good first distro. Lots of info available, Canonical support if that’s your style, etc. Studio has some bits that are useful for the music side, but not some that are good for the gaming side. Others would be the opposite. Don’t worry too much. Pretty much anything you can do on one distro you can do on another. It’s mostly picking what comes pre-installed versus what you have to install.
Long term, don’t worry about picking and sticking. Just try a few and see what feels best to you and your hardware. If you have a spare USB drive you can empty, put ventoy on it and a handful of live ISOs. You can get a quick poke at each and see whether one feels right.
eh, the lots of info thing cuts both ways. You’ll find a Lot of outdated advice
True, though having something to start with, even something wrong but that tells you where to start looking, is better than nothing.
as a beginner, this was what made me move away from ubuntu years ago. And something wrong will sometimes end up with you messing up your system. Ubuntu just isn’t a good beginner’s distro anymore.
The biggest advantage of ubuntu studio is their special pipewire setup, included in a package called ubuntustudio-pipewire-something. This can be installed by any distro that uses Ubuntu’s repositories, e.g. Mint, Zorin etc. As for the apps included, they’re easily installed manually. So you can go with Mint for a first distro.
What apps does Mint have installed by default? Because I’m trying to minimize the things I need to tinker with up front to have a good experience. I am somewhat technically savvy, but this is my first linux install, so I’d like it to go smoothly and hit the ground running. What is the benefit of mint over this OS?
You can install anything you want via their flatpak app, which is pre-setup (unlike ubuntustudio that does come with media apps, but doesn’t have an easy way to get flatpaks going – it only has snaps).
I am not familiar with flat packs vs snaps, I will have to look into that. I’m not opposed to learning different file systems if need be, it’s all new to me anyway, but if one is easier than the other I would probably go with that.
This was (and still is) my first distro, made the switch about 3 months ago. I read about the low latency kernel being good for recording but I’m not sure it’s necessary. I went with LTS for stability and regularly use Reaper, Bitwig, Blender, Krita, and as of today after getting it working finally, DaVinci Resolve.
It works for me with a Behringer UV1 preamp and a Scarlett 4i4, but it did take a lot of work to get the audio working right. At first I could only use ALSA, which only allows one program to use audio at a time. If I remember right I have to install Pipewire and Wireplumber and was then able to use JACK.
My GPU is Nvidia and there’s been some hiccups but it generally works well.
One interesting issue that happened today though was after rolling back Wine to 9.21 and reinstalling yabridge. I tested with launching a Windows app and it screwed up Plasma, seemed to delete it. I had to log into xorg and reinstall KDE. I can now log in with X11 but for some mystery Wayland is just gone. Bonus was that X11 has fixed my DaVinci issues haha so that’s something I guess.
Basically irrelevant what you choose as first distro. Do backups early and often, hopefully automated, and make sure to document your experience a bit so you know what you like and dislike. Afterwards you can check if other distributions might do the things you like better and do the things you dislike less.
The quirks are half the fun and part of your journey.
I would try it, but focus on those included applications. If you don’t like anything else about Ubuntu, those production programs will work just fine on any other distribution.
yeah thats exactly what i loved about ubuntu studio. it has basically every creative app you can find for linux.
in the same vein, i was looking at the commodore vison os, and that too is packed to the gills with included apps, more of a focus on the gaming aspect. the interface is god awful tho lol.
as a long time linux user, im happily on manjaro, but flirting with nixos.
I use Pop!_OS with Bitwig, Renoise, and Reaper as Linux native DAWs and Guitar Rig 7 through Wine emulation. I haven’t given the Guitar Rig 7 install a proper run through, but Bitwig, Renoise and Reaper work great.
I have used multiple brands of audio interface with between one and over fifty mono inputs to record, loop and analyze signals in real time on windows, linux and macos. I have used amd, intel, nvidia and arm/apple gpus to play games on linux, windows and macOS.
If you can tolerate the old man gaming experience of fiddling with some settings, maybe editing a text file or something then you’ll have a better time gaming on linux than on windows.
If you understand what your daw is doing under the hood then you will do fine using linux for production. If you need to use a specific daw or you need to be able to use its plugins on an alternate platform without much effort you won’t have an easy time.
Ubuntu studio is probably a bad choice. You’re likely better off starting from the ground up with a non-Ubuntu distribution. Especially if you have a paid copy of reaper then you’ll have no problem finding support for whatever you wanna do.
What DAW are you planning to use?
Reaper was the plan, but open to something different.
I highly recommend Ardour. I haven’t used Ubuntu Studio but I believe it’s pre-configured to minimise latency when monitoring audio.
Most people on the Ardour forum recommend AVlinux for this reason too. I’m sure you will be fine with Ubuntu Studio but I would definitely check AVlinux.
I really love Ubuntu Studio but Plasma/KDE doesn’t seem to run well on my machine. Its the result of having old hardware and not having the expertise to figure out why it doesn’t run properly. If it weren’t for that I would use it.
What hardware do you have? Mine is somewhat on the older side (ryzen 3600 and rx 6600), but new enough to run games and other software decently.
i5 4690k (I think, can verify later)
EVGA GTX 1060 6GB
32GB RAM DDR3
I run most things fine but I always have problems with distros that use the KDE/Plasma desktop enviroment. I believe this is likely an issue with my configuration where it isn’t utilizing my video card or something and a smarter person would probably not have the same problem
From my experience, KDE can run well even on older computers. I have used KDE with only 2GB ram, a 10 year old dual-core Intel Celeron CPU, and an integrated GPU, and it runs rather well, if only a little laggy here and there. Of course, XFCE runs much better with that setup, though.
It’s entirely possible it’s user error on my part but I have not had the same issue with other distros. Only distros running KDE/Plasma seem to have the issue.
Any KDE super users could probably take one look at my setup and be like “oh, you just need to toggle the dooble-gonger and set flops to 9600” but I am far too dumb
I mean, it could be. Intel integrated graphics don’t generally need additional drivers. That said, I have run KDE on stock Kubuntu and Debian and (outside of minor glitches, ofc) rarely had a problem.
