Ubuntu studio released

[oktawu]

awesome-o!

[Xtrude]

hmmm... noticed that Wings3D is no where mentioned... or audacity, or XaraLX...

[KayosIII]

Wings3d albeit an oldish version is available in the ubuntu universe repository as is the stable Audacity so both these should work without any dramas.... If you want the latest version of Wings3d the linux binaries on Wings3d.com should work just fine. XaraLX I am not so sure about.

Anyways I haven't been able to track down a comprehensive package list. Will have a much better Idea of what Is included when my torrent actually gets here...

[tide78]

Very cool. It's only a matter of time before these "tech artist friendly" distributions become more and more common. It's nice to see groups forming taking strides towards distros based on content production, as opposed to one that does everything. While doing everything is nice most of the time, the right tool is always best for the job, and cluttered toolboxes suck.

-Z

[Womball]

Very very tempting to switch. I may just install this on my other desktop.

[mech7]

:scream:Yeah it looks nice though i am staying at feisty for the moment.

[ThomasMahler]

Well, that's a nice step into the right direction.

Now, Adobe, would you please port your CS Suite to Linux, finally? That'd be nice.

Right now, Linux is the worst OS for DCC. I hope that'll change in the next few years, but right now, Win and OSX are just the way to go, IMO.

So, is the Wacom stuff running natively on Ubuntu Studio? Or let me put it this way: How many lines of code do I have to put into terminal for me to have a system that's working as nicely as OSX - approximately? ;)

[mech7]

So, is the Wacom stuff running natively on Ubuntu Studio? Or let me put it this way: How many lines of code do I have to put into terminal for me to have a system that's working as nicely as OSX - approximately? ;)


Is that the fault of linux or Wacom for not putting out decent drivers ;)

[specialbrew]

It's nice to see Inkscape featured in there - a few months ago I installed the Windows release and was genuinely surprised by just how slick and considered the application is (lovely calligraphy variables, for example).

[ThomasMahler]

Is that the fault of linux or Wacom for not putting out decent drivers ;)

The artist who spends hours in front of his freaking workstation and types code into a black box with white fonts, just so his pen works again doesn't really care about that. It either it works or it doesn't. That's the rule of the jungle!

[mech7]

The artist who spends hours in front of his freaking workstation and types code into a black box with white fonts, just so his pen works again doesn't really care about that. It either it works or it doesn't. That's the rule of the jungle!

Only one who can change it is you the consumer.. the company could not care less, they rather support one platform then two because it's cheaper unless a large part of there customers demand it they won't do anything about it. Or use windows and don't complain :D

[kiaran]

Intersting, but I'm sticking with Xubuntu. It comes with basically nothing and I can be choosy with what I want to install. Plus the xfce interface is slick... real slick.

[DuttyFoot]

can you run maya on this platform, i know that suse and red hat are supported. as far as adobe goes i have always wondered why they dont have a linux version. it would be nice to have other options than windows.

[inneractive]

Thanks for the post, I've been waiting for this one and will be trying it out tonight.

Yeah it looks nice though i am staying at feisty for the moment. - mech7

Looks like Ubuntu Studio is at 7.04, which is the Fiesty Fawn release.


The artist who spends hours in front of his freaking workstation and types code into a black box with white fonts, just so his pen works again doesn't really care about that. It either it works or it doesn't. That's the rule of the jungle! - ThomasMahler

Depends on if you are a production artist with a deadline getting paid big money for your work, or you are a student artist on a tight budget, a hobbyist or freelance artist, or especially an artist from a third world country. Personally, I have not had any problems getting any hardware up and running on an Ubuntu distro, except a usb WPA wireless adapter, but even that was resolved by using an alternative set of drivers.

Maybe hardware manufacturers will start waking up and better support Linux now that complete governments, like France and China are switching from Windows to Linux. In fact, China plans to have a viable Linux alternative to propietary OSes out withing 5-10 years.

[inneractive]

can you run maya on this platform, i know that suse and red hat are supported. as far as adobe goes i have always wondered why they dont have a linux version. it would be nice to have other options than windows.

Check the Maya forum, many of them are using Ubuntu, there is even a poll and I think Ubuntu was on top.

[inneractive]

Intersting, but I'm sticking with Xubuntu. It comes with basically nothing and I can be choosy with what I want to install. Plus the xfce interface is slick... real slick.

I agree, I like Xubuntu as well, it uses half the RAM and is very responsive. I'm mostly interested in seeing how Ubuntu Studio compares with my Reason 2.5 / M-Audio setup.

[kiaran]

Installing Maya on Ubuntu requires that you convert the .rpm installer to a .deb (Ubuntu is debian based). To do this, you need a program called 'alien' which is in the free software repository.

Maya + Ubuntu = Happy ;)

[KayosIII]

Well, that's a nice step into the right direction.

Now, Adobe, would you please port your CS Suite to Linux, finally? That'd be nice.

Right now, Linux is the worst OS for DCC. I hope that'll change in the next few years, but right now, Win and OSX are just the way to go, IMO.

So, is the Wacom stuff running natively on Ubuntu Studio? Or let me put it this way: How many lines of code do I have to put into terminal for me to have a system that's working as nicely as OSX - approximately? ;)

I am pleased to say that Wacom is configured out of the box on Kubuntu 7.04 and I can't imagine that Ubuntu Studio will be any different in that respect... (just looking for a blank DVD to burn the ISO I downloaded to).... In fact this is the first time a distro did that for me since Mandrake 7.

On the downside there are still no graphical configuration tools and hotplug support is not there yet - hotplug support should be in next version of xorg or at the very latest the one after that.

Also most of the legwork for setting up professional Audio should be done for you. Including low latency patching and allowing audio programs to run with realtime priority.

Will have more to say once I have installed it...

[KayosIII]

I agree, I like Xubuntu as well, it uses half the RAM and is very responsive. I'm mostly interested in seeing how Ubuntu Studio compares with my Reason 2.5 / M-Audio setup.
Which M-Audio card?

[KayosIII]

As predicted the Wacom was setup correctly... Each application needs to have the pressure information switched on in order to make full use of the tablet... Installed applications that I know work with the tablet are Blender, the Gimp and Inkscape....

I so far have had two minor issues with the install. While I was able to select my screens native res during the installation it stuck me at a lower resolution when I actually logged into. Fortunately this problem dissappeared when I installed the nvidia drivers (which can now be done entirely from the UI and requires a single reboot)

The second issue was with permissions being set wrong for firewire devices stopping my firewire based Soundcard from starting properly. This fix did require me to drop to command line. but is a bug and should be sorted out soon.

I am generally impressed with the setup - how it looks and feels by default but there are one or two areas where I am a little annoyed.

The Graphical User management interface was over simplified... (it needed an advanced mode so I could add myself to the right group - had this worked I could have done all repairs from the UI)...

the other thing is that the Keyboard switcher in Gnome is well - lame.... There is no way that I have found to switch keyboard layouts no way to customise what is writen on the switcher applet. As it is I can barely tell the difference between the layouts I use. Finally it only works per application.

Finally Audacity is in fact installed 1.2.6 and Wings3d 0.98.35 is available through the package installer. (make sure you set show to all available repositories)

[inneractive]

I have an Audiophile USB that works very well with my copy of Reason 2.5. But now that I am into visual graphics I can't really afford to purchase and upgrade audio software as well. Ubuntu Studio brought some applications to my attention that may make music production a much more affordable hobby for me. I have not looked too much into music production on Linux, I hope I can get the card up and running okay.

[DuttyFoot]

thanks for that info fellas, i will definately check out the autodesk forum on maya and ubuntu. a friend was telling me about paralles for windows and linux. anyone here tried that setup where they have paralles on their pc with linux.

[ThomasMahler]

Intersting, but I'm sticking with Xubuntu. It comes with basically nothing and I can be choosy with what I want to install. Plus the xfce interface is slick... real slick.

Dude, I just tried Xubuntu for the first time. You're right. It's a ****ingly great system. It's darn fast, it looks good and it's smart. It detected all my HFS+ and NTFS drives out of the box. No single Linux distro managed to do that before. It detected my Wacom Intuos out of the box and configured it to tablet mode without me doing anything. That's nice.

Btw, I think that Ubuntu Studio looks darn fugly. They should hire some better Graphic Designers. The way they try to do black glass looks amateurish. Going with a darker color scheme is okay, but then you have to be careful about what colors you use and how you build the interface.

It's okay for a first version, but they should really work on the interface, it's ugly. Yuck.

[kiaran]

Dude, I just tried Xubuntu for the first time. You're right. It's a ****ingly great system. It's darn fast, it looks good and it's smart.

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Xubuntu. I still keep a dual-boot, but I find myself booting into windows less and less. If all my maya plug-ins, Adobe software and mudbox were converted to linux, I would probably never use windows. Except perhaps for a quick game or two :)

Now that you're a convert, spread the word!

[ThomasMahler]

I'm not a convert, I'm using Windows and OSX mainly. But Xubuntu is kickass, if I'll use a Linux distro again, it'll be Xubuntu.

Man. If Adobe would just port their stuff finally - I can't live without Photoshp, After Effects, Audition, Premiere, etc.

Then I'd also not install Windows anymore. Mudbox will be cross-port pretty soon, I guess.

[durbdk]

FYI, ubuntu studio falls short of what we would expect in a multimedia studio. The underlying ubuntu feisti fawn is an awsome os (though I run suse 10.2), the shortcoming is in the fact that the distro is heavily slanted towards audio then video production; the graphic portion really doesn't offer anything to make me want to switch over. For music especially, it's awsome, but not so much for graphics work.

Overall though, ubuntu IS one of the best distros.

[inguatu]

It's cool Ubuntu is try to stand up and wave their tiny little hand and say "I can do DCC too!", but I think it'll at least be another 2-5 years out before it's strong.

XP and OSX are still the way to go for all around DCC. For me, I could care less if Adobe ever ports their stuff to Linux. It works now in XP and OSX... that's all I need.

[pem]

I installed it on my desktop computer in a dual-boot configuration. It installed very easily and set up everything including my intuos tablet and USB drives. I have a couple of quibbles:

- the default theme is hard on the eyes, but it was easy to change to something easier to read.

- my soundblaster x-fi is not supported under linux despite being a couple of years old and this is Creative's fault, but Audigys are and so is my onboard audio.

- the whole openoffice suite is not installed by default and I think it should be. In a production environment, I'd expect some production information, like timing sheets, will be in a spreadsheet format.

- the nvidia driver install was fine but I had to search the web and then edit my x config file to get my second monitor suported with Twinview. It would have been nice if the nvidia settings app figured out I had two monitors and set it up automatically.

I'm trying to work out what will be the best way to support my windows-only graphics apps. So far I have a vmware player with WinXPPro setup but I'm looking at virtual box and xen and maybe Crossover office. Haven't played with all of them yet to figure out the best experience. I'm willing to switch OSs but not so quick to change my most-used apps and I'm still getting to know blender, inkscape and Gimp. Agave is a handy app I haven't seen elsewhere.

my two bits, working my way from long-time windows to linux.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.