After only 20+ years in the making, FreeCAD hit the 1.0 mark today. The latest development cycle wasn’t easy, a lot of things happened along the way. Let’s talk about major changes in this release and then discuss how the community has been evolving.
What’s new in 1.0
Toponaming
FreeCAD used to have a whole bunch of topological naming issues that are mostly gone now.
So if you reference geometry in a part, then delete that geometry, your model shouldn’t break anymore. It’s still possible to run into issues, but it’s true for any parametric CAD software to some extent. In that respect, FreeCAD is more like any other CAD program now.
New Assembly workbench
FreeCAD now has an integrated Assembly workbench written by the Ondsel team. It currently supports a bottom-up design approach, so the preferred workflow is to create a new assembly, insert parts as links, ground one part, connect parts with joints, set offsets and limits, and then you can test the motion of the assembly.
After that, you can create exploded views — as many as you like — and place them on TechDraw pages. You can also generate bills of materials — as many as you like too. Both exploded views and bills of materials are parametric, you can reopen and adjust their settings.
Sketcher improvements
Sketcher has gone through a massive overhaul. For example, on-view parameters help dialing in dimensions as you sketch:
The all-new Dimension tool replaces multiple other tools to add constraints and has the M shortcut to switch between multiple dimensioning options that are possible in the context.
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The automatic horizontal, vertical, and midpoint constraints are… pretty self-explanatory. Here is the midpoint constraint in action, adapting to the new pad value:
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There are now Scale, Offset, Move, and Rotate tools. Move can additionally create arrays, and Rotate can make polar transforms.
There is now a basic Chamfer tool in Sketcher.
The updated Symmetry tool can now use anything as a reference and displays a preview before you click to confirm.
The Trim tool can do continuous trimming now — just press the left mouse button, drag over lines, and release.
Among other changes:
You can create 3-point rectangles and arc slots and use tangency for B-splines.
Some similar tools have been combined into one with options in the Task panel.
The entire geometry visualization has been revamped for clarity, with consistent colors and use of dashes and solid lines.
Part Design improvements
Although the Helix operation got a huge amount of fixes thanks to AIRCAP, I’d argue that, especially for people coming from other CAD programs, the game changer is an experimental option called Allow Compound that allows multiple solids in one body.
Some of the other changes are:
Revolution and Groover now have more options: to first, to last, up to face, and two dimensions.
Pad and pocket task panels have been slightly reorganized for better UI.
Linear and polar patterns now have an Offset mode.
Pad has a new “Up to shape” mode so that you can end the extrusion on multiple faces.
Measurements
The old measure tool has been replaced with a new one where you can choose a mode and save measurements as objects in the project.
There’s also a quick measure feature that displays context-sensitive measurements in the status bar. That includes length for edges, distance between points and edges, angles, radius, area for one face, and total area for multiple selected faces.
Both features only work on breps and do not support meshes (tough luck for people with STL files).
TechDraw improvements
The Insert View tool now handles virtually every type of supported objects and replaces multiple similar tools.
Views and dimensions now snap to each other for automatic alignment.
A new combined Dimensions tool replaces multiple others and works similarly to its Sketcher counterpart.
Other changes:
The new Broken View tool helps render long objects.
The new Arc Length Annotation tool creates annotations of arc length of selected edges.
The new Add Offset Vertex tool creates cosmetic vertices as offsets from selected vertices.
The new Cosmetic Circle tool: select the center and set the radius.
Color and transparency of faces can now be set per view.
FEM improvements
Some of the great improvements here are rigid body constraint and support for 2D (plane stress, plane strain, and axisymmetric) analyses—all via CalculiX. I recommend reading the dedicated post by NewJoker, the new maintainer of the workbench.
Screenshot courtesy by NewJoker
New materials system
Dave Carter did a huge amount of work on the new materials system. It combines mechanical, thermal, and visual properties.
So far, there is initial support for the workbench in CAM and FEM workbenches, as well as in Dave’s Rocket workbench. The workflow for changing just the appearance has changed and currently requires a few extra clicks, though.
VarSets
VarSets is a new system for custom properties, it helps create parametric designs. Unlike configurations in spreadsheets, VarSets sit just there in the Property View right next to your design and are accessible from scripts when you run FreeCAD in headless mode.
Also in the release
Yorik van Havre combined Arch, BIM, and NativeIFC workbenches into the BIM workbench. The native IFC part means you can now edit IFC files directly, without conversions between document models. So no more importing or exporting.
Brad Collette finally renamed the Path workbench to CAM. The workbench also comes with a brand-new milling simulator that is faster, prettier, and more precise—kudos to Shai Seger. Also, thanks to phaseloop the V-Carve operation now has features like Step down, Finishing pass, Head movement optimization, and debugVoronoi method. All that improves carved surface quality and increases the carving speed up to 50%.
Community changes
The way the entire project operates has changed a lot during the latest development cycle.
Merge meetings. Every Monday, the team meets on Jitsi to go through the list of pull requests, discuss which ones are good to merge, and then merge them one by one. The meeting is frequently visited by developers who contributed patches and are ready to discuss specifics.
This helped tremendously to keep the count of unapplied PRs relatively low. Their number accumulated somewhat in the few months leading up to the release of FreeCAD 1.0, but maintainers have already started cleaning up that backlog.
Developer meetings. Likewise, the larger team started meeting once or twice a month on Jitsi to discuss ongoing work and further plans.
Both merge meetings and developer meetings are public and available on the project’s calendar. Everybody is welcome to join and participate. Agendas are public and, since recently, so are the meeting notes.
Design Working Group. This team was formed about a year ago to start hacking on UX/UI issues. This resulted in a major icons cleanup and a number of UI improvements in both FreeCAD and some of the addons, such as SheetMetal.
CAD Working Group. This is the latest addition. This group’s larger objective is to help the project stay relevant in the current CAD landscape.
The grant program
Disclaimer: I was involved in the making of the ongoing grant program, so I’m sorry of this part of the post comes out as patting myself on the back.
The original grant program wasn’t very successful. The FreeCAD Project Association, the non-profit behind the project, only gave four grants, $1K each: two honorary (RealThunder and Adjinkya Dahale) and two to Adrián Insaurralde for release management. The FPA members were cautious about handling larger sums of money, and the community didn’t seem interested in applying. So something had to change.
I did the research (summary here, full text here), came up with some recommendations, and then designed a new program.
The general idea is that grant applications go through the review committee that says whether the application makes sense technically but it cannot veto an application. The decision is then made by the FPA general assembly comprised of both developers and prominent community members. Each application is voted on the same way any other proposal is voted on.
I will do a detailed post-mortem of the first year of the program on FreeCAD’s blog in December, but here are some preliminary takeaways:
The annual program didn’t get as much traction as out-of-program grants. Let’s see how things go in the second year.
We ended up with a mix of projects: both short contracts for smaller and well-defined projects, 1-year long contracts for ongoing work on infrastructure and the blog, and a few projects that are somewhere in the middle.
The “X hour at Y per-hour rate” idea worked well for the toponaming project.
A few projects seem to be stalling, but people don’t get paid for stalled work, so that’s bearable.
Personally, I think this model works sufficiently well. Some of the outcomes are:
A huge boost to the toponaming project thanks to CalligaroV and the late Brad McLean.
All sorts of improvements to the FEM workbench thanks to a grant to Mario Passaglia, but also thanks to NewJoker, who pretty much became the new FEM maintainer.
Sketcher improvements thanks to Adjinkya Dahale.
User manual update thanks to Andrianos Karampilis.
The Ondsel story in a nutshell
Ondsel was formed in early 2023 as a commercial entity building Lens—an online product management system and a CAD-specific file-sharing service on top of FreeCAD.
The company probably went a bit too far and started using the funds to fix some serious problems in FreeCAD to make the software behind the PDM more approachable for users. The fixes were great and praised by the community (as a former contractor, I’m biased, of course), but the PDM flopped, so the company is now shutting down.
I already covered this topic in a recent weekly recap. All I can say here is that Ondsel failing does not automatically mean you can’t build a successful business around FreeCAD. Ondsel is not even the only (or the first) attempt to do so. A more focused service with a product-market fit can succeed.
Apart from the fixes and the push for change in FreeCAD’s operation, one contribution that doesn’t get talked about much is that Ondsel did change the perception of commercial development around FreeCAD. I think the next company that comes to do a similar thing will have it easier to gain the community’s trust.
Looking forward
The way the project operates has changed so much that I think there’s a kind of expectation building up in the community that the team will announce the next big things for the project. This has already been discussed by developers. Some of the ideas are:
Further UX/UI improvements, including the porting of RT’s quality-of-life improvements back upstream.
Earmarking a chunk of donations towards fixing some of the really annoying issues in OpenCascade.
Move away from Coin3D to some newer rendering solution (WIP in the RealThunder’s fork).
Hidden line removal rewrite in TechDraw.
Better GD&T implementation.
Performance improvements.
Regarding UX/UI specifically, the FPA made a smart move to use some of the available funds to get design working group members some training. So far, only Joe “Obelisk” Sardos claimed the grant and studied UX design. But he is also one of the prolific members of the group and he recently got a new grant for revamping artwork guidelines and icons.
Another team member, Kacper Donat, recently applied for a grant to implement a new feature preview system, including transparent previews.
Overall, the implementation of bigger ideas depends on donations. The current model, where the FPA reserves the majority of donations for grants, seems to be efficient.
There are limitations, though. The FPA members feel comfortable spending EUR 8K on a project that will go on for several months. But spending EUR 5K a month on a single project (and thus effectively having a full-time employee) feels too much at the moment.
This is where both the community and corporate sponsors could save the day. And after so many years, I think the organization and the spirit are finally in the right place to make the most of it.
Patreon subscribers get early access to my posts. If you are feeling generous, you can also make a one-time donation on BuyMeACoffee.
Week highlights: new Verge3D release, major improvements coming to Inkscape, FreeCAD has zero v1.0 release blockers.
Inkscape
There are a lot of exciting things happening here.
The one that probably brings me the most joy is the newly proposed switch to using CapyPDF for color-managed PDF output. This is a major milestone on the way to getting CMYK PDFs out of Inkscape.
CapyPDF is a new-ish project started around early 2023 by Jussi Pakkanen. Martin Owens is using the bleeding edge of that library to create a new default Inkscape extension for PDF output. CapyPDF uses LittleCMSv2 for all color transforms and doesn’t have a document model, it exposes PDF primitives directly.
The latter is a kind of a big deal. The main reason Inkscape couldn’t use the PDF exporter from Scribus is because it is highly dependent on Scribus’s document model (at least, that’s my recollection). So Martin would have to decouple the exporter from the document model first, which would be quite a challenge. Instead, he chose to use CapyPDF (he’s a minor contributor now, too).
There’s not much to show in terms of UI, and CI pipelines are failing on that merge request for now anyway. But even though everyone knows Martin has been hacking on CMYK support probably for a couple of years now, it’s still very exciting to see actual patches landing as merge requests.
Rivaling this exciting news, Mike Kowalski is turning the Object Properties dialog into something that is beginning to resemble Figma and PenPot’s sidebars. The latest patch is bringing fill and stroke selectors.
Meanwhile, PBS continues hacking on his older patch that implements tabs for documents. It works pretty much like in any other application with tabs, such as a browser. You can rearrange tabs, you can drag a tab out to make it a separate window, and you can drag a tab between two Inkscape windows.
That’s not the only thing PBS does. He recently picked up Martin’s older patch that rewrites the Connector tool as a live path effect. Not a lot to look at right now, but a great improvement nonetheless.
Verge3D 4.8
This new version of Verge3D brings spatial audio support, shader optimizations, better click detection for points, lines, and grids, and support for Blender 4.3 and 4.4 including new Metallic BSDF and Gabor Texture nodes.
See here for release notes.
FreeCAD
There are exactly zero release blockers for v1.0 right now. When you are reading this, the release has probably been already tagged, and an official announcement is coming soon. After over 20 years in the making, about time, right?
One interesting conversation recently has been about Paul Ebbers’s work on the program’s 3rd-party Ribbon-style UI. The addon is currently unpolished and will need a lot of tweaking (for me, the UI is twice the size of the usual one for some reason, including fonts). But it’s worth watching, and Paul has a public roadmap.
Meanwhile, Ondsel is shutting down the Lens server on November 22. Oh, and earlier this week, I posted a tutorial on customizing default FreeCAD to look and work like Ondsel ES. Check it out if you prefer OES to FreeCAD.
Artworks
“Classical architecture” by Carlos Cardona, made with Blender:
“Hole in the wall” by Laurent Palmier, made with Blender and GIMP:
Just another practice chart by 土豆LCZ, made with Blender and Photoshop:
Patreon subscribers get early access to my posts. If you are feeling generous, you can also make a one-time donation on BuyMeACoffee.
Cheers!
qpwgraph v0.8.0 (mid-autumn'24) is released!
Change-log:
A new Patchbay/Manage... feature dialog is introduced, targeting the currently loaded patchbay, allowing the removal and cleanup of connection rules that are no longer used, obsolete or simply not applicable anymore.
Force an actual complete graph refresh on main View/Refresh...
Introducing the new Graph/Options... dialog, to where the most general option settings have been (re)moved from the main Help menu.
Introducing Graph/Options.../Filter to hide nodes by node name pattern (blacklist).
Fix default PipeWire node nickname if given empty.
Description:
qpwgraph is a graph manager dedicated to PipeWire, using the Qt C++ framework, based and pretty much like the same of QjackCtl.
Project page:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/rncbc/qpwgraph
Downloads:
source tarball:
qpwgraph-0.8.0.tar.gz
qpwgraph-0.8.0.tar.gz.sig
source package (openSUSE Tumbleweed):
qpwgraph-0.8.0-45.1.src.rpm
binary package (openSUSE Tumbleweed):
qpwgraph-0.8.0-45.1.x86_64.rpm
Flatpak package:
https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.rncbc.qpwgraph
Git repos:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/rncbc/qpwgraph.git (official)
https://github.com/rncbc/qpwgraph.git
https://gitlab.com/rncbc/qpwgraph.git
https://codeberg.org/rncbc/qpwgraph.git
License:
qpwgraph is free, open-source software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later.
Enjoy!
You might think that visualizing music with lasers would be a complicated and difficult affair. In fact, it’s remarkably simple if you want it to be, and [byte_thrasher] shows us just how easy it can be.
At heart, what you’re trying to do is make a laser trace out waveforms of the music you’re listening to, right? So you just need a way to move the laser’s beam along with the sound waves from whatever you’re listening to. You might be thinking about putting a laser on the head of a servo-operated platform fed movement instructions from a digital music file, but you’d be way over-complicating things. You already have something that moves with the music you play — a speaker!
[byte_thrasher’s] concept is simple. Get a Bluetooth speaker, and stick it in a bowl. Cover the bowl with a flexible membrane, like plastic wrap. Stick a small piece of mirror on the plastic. When you play music with the speaker, the mirror will vibrate and move in turn. All you then have to do is aim a safe laser in a safe direction such that it bounces off the mirror and projects on to a surface. Then, the laser will dance with your tunes, and it’ll probably look pretty cool!
We’ve seen some beautiful laser visual effects before, too. Just be careful and keep your power levels safe and your beams pointing where they should be.
put a bluetooth speaker in a bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap pulled taut, glue a shard of mirror to the plastic wrap, point a laser beam at the mirror so that it bounces off towards the ceiling, play music, enjoy pic.twitter.com/Vs6lBJihCg
— avi (@byte_thrasher) November 9, 2024
Unreal Engine 5.5 is a major release for artists of all kinds. On the audio side, the free-to-start platform has new tools for visualizing and debugging, powerful Audio Widgets for UI interactions, and a slew of MetaSounds improvements for workflow, quality of life, and targeting different platforms. Oh, and - finally, there's reverb.
The post Unreal Engine 5.5 for sound: Audio Widgets, MetaSounds news appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.
From full free and open-source software to proprietary favorites from other platforms, the plug-in options on Linux have quietly come into their own. linuxdaw.org has a visual, searchable catalog - and it's a reminder of just how spoiled for choice you are even without Windows or macOS.
The post Linux DAW is a one-stop catalog of free and proprietary plug-ins for Linux appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.
JJ-FZF is a TUI (Terminal-based User Interface) for Jujutsu, built on top
of fzf. It centers around the jj log view, providing key bindings for common
operations on JJ/Git repositories. About six months ago, I revisited JJ,
drawn in by its promise of Automatic rebase and conflict resolution. I
have…
Hello again,
Qtractor 1.4.0 (halloween'24) is out!
Change-log:
Improved color contrast on track and clip title labels, when given track foreground and background colors are too similar in lightness.
Clip/Split now also applies to multiple selected clips, on any other track than current, if the split point (play-head) is found within.
Clip Merge/Export... audio clips now taking the internal audio resolution (ie. 64 frames/period), independent to former JACK/Pipewire buffer-size/period.
New Clip Mute state property introduced.
New MIDI clip tool option: Normalize / Compress.
Prepping up next development cycle (Qt >= 6.8)
Description:
Qtractor is an audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application written in C++ with the Qt framework. Target platform is Linux, where the Jack Audio Connection Kit (JACK) for audio and the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) for MIDI are the main infrastructures to evolve as a fairly-featured Linux desktop audio workstation GUI, specially dedicated to the personal home-studio.
Website:
https://qtractor.org
Project page:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor
Downloads:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor/files
source tarball:
qtractor-1.4.0.tar.gz
source package (openSUSE Tumbleweed):
qtractor-1.4.0-6.1.rncbc.suse.src.rpm
binary package (openSUSE Tumbleweed):
qtractor-1.4.0-6.1.rncbc.suse.x86_64.rpm
AppImage packages:
qtractor-1.4.0-6.1.x86_64.AppImage
Flatpak package:
https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.rncbc.qtractor
Git repos:
https://git.code.sf.net/p/qtractor/code
https://github.com/rncbc/qtractor.git
https://gitlab.com/rncbc/qtractor.git
https://codeberg.org/rncbc/qtractor.git
Wiki:
https://sourceforge.net/p/qtractor/wiki/
static rendering:
https://qtractor.org/doc
user manual & how-to's:
qtractor-manual-and-howtos.epub
qtractor-manual-and-howtos.pdf
License:
Qtractor is free, open-source Linux Audio software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later.
Cheers && Keep having (lotsa) fun!
As most git users are aware, the default branch name in git changed from
master to main a while ago. Since I maintain projects created both before
and after this change, some maintenance tasks have become more difficult to
automate as a result (and I'm a sucker for consistency).
I put off dealing with this because I was planning to make master branches
disappear at the same time APIs are broken, but that wasn't a good idea for
several reasons beyond the scope of this post. So, I've changed all of my
personal projects, and all projects maintained under the LV2 umbrella, to use
main.
If you're tracking any of those repositories, maintain packaging
infrastructure, or similar, please update your local trees and/or configuration
accordingly. It's best to rename the local branch with git, since this
preserves your local reftree and avoids accidental use of the old name:
git branch -m master main
The GStreamer team is pleased to announce another bug fix release
in the new stable 1.24 release series of your favourite cross-platform
multimedia framework!
This release only contains bugfixes and a security fix
and it should be safe to update from 1.24.x.
Highlighted bugfixes:
gst-rtsp-server security fix
GstAggregator start time selection and latency query fixes for force-live mode
audioconvert: fix dynamic handling of mix matrix, and accept custom upstream event for setting one
encodebin: fix parser selection for encoders that support multiple codecs
flvmux improvments for pipelines where timestamps don't start at 0
glcontext: egl: Unrestrict the support base DRM formats
kms: Add IMX-DCSS auto-detection in sink and fix stride with planar formats in allocator
macOS main application event loop fixes
mpegtsdemux: Handle PTS/DTS wraparound with ignore-pcr=true
playbin3, decodebin3, parsebin, urisourcebin: fix races, and improve stability and stream-collection handling
rtpmanager: fix early RTCP SR generation for sparse streams like metadata
qml6glsrc: Reduce capture delay
qtdemux: fix parsing of rotation matrix with 180 degree rotation
rtpav1depay: added wait-for-keyframe and request-keyframe properties
srt: make work with newer libsrt versions and don't re-connect on authentication failure
v4l2 fixes and improvement
webrtcsink, webrtcbin and whepsrc fixes
cerbero: fix Python 3.13 compatibility, g-i with newer setuptools, bootstrap on Arch Linux; iOS build fixes
Ship qroverlay plugin in binary packages
Various bug fixes, memory leak fixes, and other stability and reliability improvements
See the GStreamer 1.24.9 release notes
for more details.
Binaries for Android, iOS, Mac OS X and Windows will be available shortly.
For those who build ardour from source, please read:
git/master is now considered an unstable pre-release branch. The “pianorule” branch has been merged, and will cause significant breakage for a while yet.
master has been tagged 9.0-pre0 which will (a) cause a major version switch (b) will generally display the pre-release warning dialog every time unless you grep the source code to find the name of the file to create to disable it.
If you need to build an earlier version of Ardour from a git repository, please use git checkout VERSION first to avoid building this unstable master branch.
We will be working over the next few months to get this into shape for a 9.0 release with several notable new features (region FX, clip recording and clip editing among them).
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Ardour 8.10 is now available for Linux, Windows and macOS. As with the last several releases, 8.9 turned out to have at least a couple of new major issues that required a hot-fix. We believe that we have corrected issues with performance caused by scheduling of disk input/output threads (these problems tended to be system dependent, but were very real on systems where they occured). Importing SMF (MIDI) via drag-n-drop now uses the file name once again. Content-slipping a region correctly causes an update of the playback buffers so you can hear the result as expected.
In addition to those hot-fixes, 8.10 sees small updates to all our non-default color themes, a new MIDI binding map for the M-Audio Axiom 49 MkII and a new Lua script to duplicate regions on the grid.
This is intended to be the last release of the 8.x series. Our git repository is now at 9.0-pre0, and should no longer be considered stable or usable for production work now that it contains what was the “pianorule” branch. Over the next few months, we will be working hard to get this into shape for a 9.0 release with several notable new features.
Download as usual with the full release notes (for 8.7 - 8.10) at the normal place.
27 posts - 12 participants
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The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu Studio 24.10 code-named “Oracular Oriole”. This marks Ubuntu Studio’s 35th release. This release is a Regular release and as such, it is supported for 9 months, until July 2025.
Since it’s just out, you may experience some issues, so you might want to wait a bit before upgrading. Please see the release notes for a more complete list of changes and known issues. Listed here are some of the major highlights.
You can download Ubuntu Studio 24.10 from our download page.
Special Notes
The Ubuntu Studio 24.10 disk image (ISO) exceeds 4 GB and cannot be downloaded to some file systems such as FAT32 and may not be readable when burned to a standard DVD. For this reason, we recommend downloading to a compatible file system. When creating a boot medium, we recommend creating a bootable USB stick with the ISO image or burning to a Dual-Layer DVD.
Minimum installation media requirements: Dual-Layer DVD or 8GB USB drive.
Images can be obtained from this link: https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/24.10/release/
Full updated information, including Upgrade Instructions, are available in the Release Notes.
Upgrades from 24.04 LTS should be enabled within a month after release, so we appreciate your patience.
New This Release
Minimal Installation
We have now implemented minimal installations in the system installer. This will let you install a minimal desktop to get going and then install what you need via Ubuntu Studio Installer. This will make a faster installation process and lets you customize what you need for your personal Studio.
Unfortunately, at least for the time being, we also had to get rid of the default shortcuts in the panel since it would cause an error when loading without the applications being installed. A solution for this is coming in 25.04.
Generic Kernel
The Generic Ubuntu Kernel is now fully capable of low-latency workloads. As such, with this release, we have switched from the LowLatency Kernel to the Generic Kernel with the boot options to enable the low-latency configuration enabled by default.
These options can be changed via Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration and customized depending on your use-case and your workload. If you don’t need the low-latency and wish to have a computer that is more energy-efficient, you may wish to turn off all three options. The choice is yours.
Plasma 6
Ubuntu Studio, in cooperation with Kubuntu, switched to Plasma 6 this cycle. This switch was not without issues, so we expect many of the issues to be Plasma 6 related, especially when it comes to the default configuration and theming.
New Look
Ubuntu Studio had been using the same theming, “Materia” (except for the 22.04 LTS release which was a re-colored Breeze theme) since 19.04. However, Materia has gone dead upstream. To stay consistent, we found a fork called “Orchis” which seems to match closely and have switched to that.As you can see from the screenshot, it has more vivid colors, round corners, and a more modern look. We hope you enjoy it. We are aware of a bug involving a dark bar under windows which may be an issue, but sometimes switching the window decorations to another variation of the theme is a solution.
PipeWire 1.2.4
This release contains PipeWire 1.2. With PipeWire 1.2, FireWire devices requiring FFADO are supported. Do note that the Ubuntu Studio team does not have any FireWire devices and could not test this.
PipeWire’s JACK compatibility is configured to use out-of-the-box and is zero-latency internally. System latency is configurable via Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration.
However, if you would rather use straight JACK 2 instead, that’s also possible. Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration can disable and enable PipeWire’s JACK compatibility on-the-fly. From there, you can simply use JACK via QJackCtl.
Complete Deprecation of PulseAudio/JACK setup/Studio Controls
Due to the maturity of PipeWire, the traditional PulseAudio/JACK setup, where JACK would be started/stopped by Studio Controls and bridged to PulseAudio, is now fully deprecated and the option is not offered anymore. This configuration is no longer installable via Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration. Studio Controls may return someday as a PipeWire fine-tuning solution, but for now it is unsupported by the developer.
Ardour 8.6
While this does not represent the latest release of Ardour, Ardour 8.6 is a great release. If you would like the latest release, we highly recommend purchasing one-time or subscribing to Ardour directly from the developers to help support this wonderful application.
To help support Ardour’s funding, you may obtain later versions directly from ardour.org. To do so, please one-time purchase or subscribe to Ardour from their website. If you wish to get later versions of Ardour from us, you will have to wait until the next regular release of Ubuntu Studio, due in April 2025.
Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration
Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration’s Dummy Audio Device now also has a much-requested Dummy Audio Input.
Additionally as described above, Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration has an option to configure the default boot parameters that are commonly used to enable the low-latency capabilities of the Linux kernel used in Ubuntu. For more information about that, see the Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration page.
We’re back on Matrix
You’ll notice that the menu links to our support chat and on our website will now take you to a Matrix chat. This is due to the Ubuntu community carving its own space within the Matrix federation.
However, this is not only a support chat. This is also a creativity discussion chat. You can pass ideas to each other and you’re welcome to it if the topic remains within those confines. However, if a moderator or admin warns you that you’re getting off-topic (or the intention for the chat room), please heed the warning.
This is a persistent connection, meaning if you close the window (or chat), it won’t lose your place as you may only need to sign back in to resume the chat.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Does Ubuntu Studio contain snaps?A: Yes. Mozilla’s distribution agreement with Canonical changed, and Ubuntu was forced to no longer distribute Firefox in a native .deb package. We have found that, after numerous improvements, Firefox now performs just as well as the native .deb package did.
Thunderbird also became a snap so that the maintainers can get security patches delivered faster.
Additionally, Freeshow is an Electron-based application. Electron-based applications cannot be packaged in the Ubuntu repositories in that they cannot be packaged in a traditional Debian source package. While such apps do have a build system to create a .deb binary package, it circumvents the source package build system in Launchpad, which is required when packaging for Ubuntu. However, Electron apps also have a facility for creating snaps, which can be uploaded and included. Therefore, for Freeshow to be included in Ubuntu Studio, it had to be packaged as a snap.
We have additional snaps that are Ubuntu-specific, such as the Firmware Updater and the Security Center. Contrary to popular myth, Ubuntu does not have any plans to switch all packages to snaps, nor do we.
Q: Will you make an ISO with {my favorite desktop environment}?A: To do so would require creating an entirely new flavor of Ubuntu, which would require going through the Official Ubuntu Flavor application process. Since we’re completely volunteer-run, we don’t have the time or resources to do this. Instead, we recommend you download the official flavor for the desktop environment of your choice and use Ubuntu Studio Installer to get Ubuntu Studio – which does *not* convert that flavor to Ubuntu Studio but adds its benefits.
Q: What if I don’t want all these packages installed on my machine?A: Simply use the Ubuntu Studio Installer to remove the features of Ubuntu Studio you don’t want or need!
Get Involved!
A wonderful way to contribute is to get involved with the project directly! We’re always looking for new volunteers to help with packaging, documentation, tutorials, user support, and MORE! Check out all the ways you can contribute!
Our project leader, Erich Eickmeyer, is now working on Ubuntu Studio at least part-time, and is hoping that the users of Ubuntu Studio can give enough to generate a monthly part-time income. We’re not there, but if every Ubuntu Studio user donated monthly, we’d be there! Your donations are appreciated! If other distributions can do it, surely we can! See the sidebar for ways to give!
Special Thanks
Huge special thanks for this release go to:
Eylul Dogruel: Artwork, Graphics DesignRoss Gammon: Upstream Debian Developer, Testing, Email SupportSebastien Ramacher: Upstream Debian DeveloperDennis Braun: Upstream Debian DeveloperRik Mills: Kubuntu Council Member, help with Plasma desktopScarlett Moore: Kubuntu Project Lead, help with Plasma desktopCristian Delgado: Translations for Ubuntu Studio MenuDan Bungert: Subiquity, seed fixesLen Ovens: Testing, insightWim Taymans: Creator of PipeWireMauro Gaspari: Tutorials, Promotion, and Documentation, Testing, keeping Erich saneKrytarik Raido: IRC Moderator, Mailing List ModeratorErich Eickmeyer: Project Leader, Packaging, Development, Direction, Treasurer
Ardour 8.8 turned out to have a couple of major issues. Many users experienced crashes at random times that were caused by a subtle change in how waveforms were drawn, introduced in 8.8. It also turned out that MIDI notes immediately at the start of playback were ignored.
Both of these have been fixed (and also the nightly website has been restored to proper functioning), and so 8.9 is now released and available. You can download it as usual.
We apologize for the lapse in quality control that led to these mistakes in the 8.8 release.
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It’s 2024. You’ve probably got one or more pairs of wireless headphones around the house. [Barnso] prefers wired headphones with a long cable, but he also decries the fact that it often gets tangled in his chair. The solution? A pulley system to make everything easier.
The concept is simple. [Barnso]’s system uses three pulleys. The headphone cable goes to the PC, and then runs over the first pulley. It then runs under a second pulley which is free to move, but weighted so that it naturally wants to fall down under gravity. The cable then comes back up over a third pulley, and then runs to the headphones on [Barnso]’s head. Basically, it’s a super simple cable retraction mechanism that keeps the long headphone cable organized and in one place.
It’s nice to see a simple mechanism that makes life easier, particularly one that solves a problem so many of us have faced in real life. The construction shown in the video is almost (intentionally?) maddeningly hacky but it does the job. If you prefer to go wireless, though, we can show you how to do that too.
The GStreamer Conference team is pleased to announce that the full conference
schedule including talk abstracts and speaker biographies is now available for
this year's lineup of talks and speakers, covering again an exciting range of
topics!
The GStreamer Conference 2024 will take place on 7-8 October 2024
in Montréal, Canada, followed by a hackfest.
Details about the conference, hackfest and how to register can be found on the
conference website.
This year's topics and speakers:
GStreamer State of the Union
Tim-Philipp Müller, Centricular
HLS master playlist management made easy
Sanchayan Maity, Asymptotic
What's going on in my pipelines?
Guillaume Desmottes
GStreamer Nervous System for AI Brain : Introducing Python Analytics
Aaron Boxer, Collabora
New developments with the WebRTC crate
Mathieu Duponchelle, Centricular
Real-Time Network Audio with GStreamer on Windows
Taruntej Kanakamalla, Asymptotic
GStreamer & Rust: What has happened over the last 5 years
Sebastian Dröge, Centricular
It’s time for some clock rate matching
Arun Raghavan, Asymptotic
Embedded audio policies made easy with WirePlumber
George Kiagiadakis, Collabora
GStreamer Vulkan Video: 2024 edition
Stéphane Cerveau, Igalia; Victor Manuel Jáquez Leal, Igalia
librice: a sans-IO ICE networking library
Matthew Waters, Centricular
Open Standards for Media including ST 2110 and IPMX
Dan Maloney, Matrox Video
State of QUIC in GStreamer
Sanchayan Maity, Asymptotic
Gst.WASM Launched
Jorge Zapata, Fluendo
A New RTSP Source Element Written in Rust
Nirbheek Chauhan, Centricular
GStreamer NVIDIA memory in Jetson: looking for an efficient way to process video frames when handling raw CUDA kernels
Diego Nieto Munoz, Fluendo
From GL to your Encoder, Zero-Copy Made Possible
Nicolas Dufresne, Collabora
unixfd: Zero-copy multi-process pipeline
Xavier Claessens, Netflix
GStreamer Meets GPAC: Enhancing GStreamer's Capabilities through GPAC Integration
Deniz Ugur, Motion Spell
Update on Encrypted Media Extensions in GStreamer
Jordan Yelloz, Collabora
Which plugin should I use on Windows?
Seungha Yang, Centricular
GstWebRTC / WebKit state of the union
Philippe Normand, Igalia; Carlos Bentzen, Igalia
How we rewrote GStreamer in Elixir - 8 years later
Mateusz Front, Software Mansion
Video Editing with GStreamer: an update
Thibault Saunier, Igalia
GStreamer RTP sessions in Rust
Matthew Waters, Centricular
AI-assisted video encoding with AMD Alveo MA35D
Jakub Adam, Collabora
TV channel in the cloud with GStreamer
Jurijs Satcs, Veset.tv
Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. Automated Air-Ground Communication with GStreamer
Aaron Boxer, Collabora
Real time volumetric video streaming
Sudarshan Bisht, Nokia
Gst-Analytics: Advancements in Machine Learning and Analytics Pipeline
Daniel Morin, Collabora
Experiences during the development of point cloud encoding for real-time 3D video streaming using GStreamer
Jozsef Szabo, Nokia
HDR in GTK
Matthias Clasen, RedHat
macOS and iOS Support: Recent History and Near Future
Nirbheek Chauhan, Centricular
AMD's Video Processing Engine
Harry Wentland, AMD
Windows Graphics Stack Improvements – Direct3D12
Seungha Yang, Centricular
Raven AI Engine: a framework to develop AI computer vision GStreamer elements
Andoni Morales Alastruey, Fluendo
Learnings of building a scaleable webrtc media pipeline in rust using gstreamer
Ramyak Mehra, Dyte
LiveKit Support for GStreamer WebRTC Elements
Jordan Yelloz, Collabora
Perfect Harmony: How we synchronized Audio and Video from Multiple Sources using GStreamer for Seamless Real-Time Streaming
Tokunbo Quaye, IPS; Michael Yackavage, IPS
Developing and debugging on Windows, Fluendo experience.
Rubén Gonzalez, Fluendo; Diego Nieto Munoz, Fluendo
Playback support, 2024 update
Edward Hervey, Centricular
Streamlining Video Presentation and Recording with GStreamer-Based Processing
Tomasz Mikołajczyk
GStreamer and display clock synchronization
Jochen Henneberg, Centricular
Scenic and GStreamer on stage : collaborative theater adventures at the Society for Arts and Technology
Olivier Gauthier, Society for Arts and Technology
GStreamer and VR
Jan Schmidt, Centricular
Lightning Talks:
GQuark in GStreamer structures — What nonsense!
Sebastian Dröge, Centricular
Integration testing video with Test Containers by example
Johannes Nel, Genius Sports
Silhouette, the ML/PipeWire-powered virtual camera device app
George Kiagiadakis, Collabora
Last year's updates in Fluster
Rubén Gonzalez, Fluendo
A new GStreamer plugin to leverage the skia 2D drawing library
Thibault Saunier, Igalia
New RTP payloaders & depayloaders in Rust
Sebastian Dröge, Centricular
How easy it is to write a video sink plugin
ramyak mehra, Dyte
Closed Captions: Additional Things GStreamer Can Do
Matthew Waters, Centricular
Is an H264 encoder base class for hardware accelerated API possible?
Victor Manuel Jáquez Leal, Igalia
Effects of a GStreamer version upgrade on Yocto-based application
Michael Yackavage, IPS
GstVA updates
Victor Manuel Jáquez Leal, Igalia
GStreamer plugin updates on webOS as a platform
Seungwook Cha, LG Electronics
An update on GStreamer validate
Thibault Saunier, Igalia
Fluendo and Cerbero, testing challenges
Jorge Zapata, Fluendo
Yet another V4L2 update
Nicolas Dufresne, Collabora
A new Windows web browser source plugin - webview2
Seungha Yang, Centricular
Seeking Perfection: Challenges and Solution attempts in Implementing HLS Stream Seeking with RTP Synchronization Using GStreamer
Tokunbo Quaye, IPS
...and more to come
Submit your lightning talk now!
Many thanks to our amazing sponsors ‒ Platinum sponsors
Collabora,
Igalia, and
Pexip,
Gold sponsors
Centricular,
La Société des Arts Technologiques,
Axis Communications, and
Genius Sports,
and Silver sponsors
Laerdal Labs,
asymptotic,
Cablecast, and
Fluendo,
without whom the conference would not be possible in this form.
We hope to see you all in Montréal! Don't forget to register as soon as possible if you're planning on joining us, so we can order enough food and drinks!
It's the last week of our exhibitions.They are open today 12:00 - 18:00 Oksasenkatu 11 in HelsinkiTina Mariane Krogh Madsen : [proximity] sensing in, sensing outMalte Steiner : Abolute Power : OhnmachtThis week our exhibitions are open Wednesday - Friday: 12:00 - 18:00Saturday - Sunday: 12:00 - 17:00On Saturday the 28. there is additionally from 18.00 – 20.00 a Sound event with Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen, and TMS (Madsen & Malte Steiner) https://oksasenkatu11.fi/
The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the beta release of Ubuntu Studio 24.10, codenamed “Oracular Oriole”.
While this beta is reasonably free of any showstopper installer bugs, you will find some bugs within. This image is, however, mostly representative of what you will find when Ubuntu Studio 24.10 is released on October 10, 2024.
Special Notes
The Ubuntu Studio 24.10 image (ISO) exceeds 4 GB and cannot be downloaded to some file systems such as FAT32 and may not be readable when burned to a DVD. For this reason, we recommend downloading to a compatible file system. When creating a boot medium, we recommend creating a bootable USB stick with the ISO image or burning to a Dual-Layer DVD.
Images can be obtained from this link: https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/24.10/beta/
Full updated information, including Upgrade Instructions, are available in the Release Notes.
New Features This Release
Plasma 6.1 is now the default desktop environment, an upgrade from Plasma 5.27. This may have some unknown bugs that we’re ironing out as we go along, along with theming.Ubuntu’s Generic Kernel is now capable of the same low latency processing as Ubuntu’s lowlatency kernel when certain boot parameters are used. Additionally, the lowlatency kernel is eventually going to be deprecated. With this in mind, we have switched to the generic kernel with the low latency boot parameters enabled by default. These boot parameters can be tweaked in Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuation.Minimal Install Option for new installations. This allows users to install Ubuntu Studio and customize what they need later with Ubuntu Studio Installer.Orchis is now our default theme, which replaces Materia, our default theme since 19.04. Materia has stopped development, so we decided to PipeWire continues to improve with every release and now includes FFADO support. Version 1.2.3Ubuntu Studio Installer‘s included Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration utility for fine-tuning the PipeWire setup now includes the ability to create or remove a dummy audio input device. Version 1.30The legacy PulseAudio/JACK has been deprecated and discontinued, is no longer supported, and is no longer an option to use. Going forward, PipeWire or JACK are the only options. PipeWire’s JACK integration can be disabled from Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration to use JACK by itself with QJackCtl, or via other means.
Major Package Upgrades
Ardour version 8.6.0Qtractor version 1.1OBS Studio version 30.2.3Audacity version 3.6.1digiKam version 8.4.0Kdenlive version 24.08.1Krita version 5.2.3
There are many other improvements, too numerous to list here. We encourage you to look around the freely-downloadable ISO image.
Known Issues
Due to the transition to Plasma 6 and Qt6, there may be some theming inconsistencies, especially for those upgrading. To work around these issues, reapply the default theme using System Settings and select “Orchis-dark” from Kvantum Manager.Some graphics cards might find the transparency in the Orchis theme difficult to work with. For that reason, you can switch to “Orchis-dark-solid” in the Kvantum Manager. Feedback is welcome, and if the transparency becomes too burdensome, we can switch to the solid theme by default.The new minimal install mode will not load the desktop properly with the extra icons (gimp, krita, patchance, etc.) in the top bar, so those had to be removed by default. If you find them useful, you can add them by right-clicking in the menu and clicking “Pin to Task Manager”. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Official Ubuntu Studio release notes can be found at https://ubuntustudio.org/ubuntu-studio-24-10-release-notes/
Further known issues, mostly pertaining to the desktop environment, can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OracularOriole/ReleaseNotes/Kubuntu
Additionally, the main Ubuntu release notes contain more generic issues: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/oracular-oriole-release-notes/44878
How You Can Help
Please test using the test cases on https://iso.qa.ubuntu.com. All you need is a Launchpad account to get started.
Additionally, we need financial contributions. Our project lead, Erich Eickmeyer, is working long hours on this project and trying to generate a part-time income. Go here to see how you can contribute financially (options are also in the sidebar).
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Does Ubuntu Studio contain snaps?A: Yes. Mozilla’s distribution agreement with Canonical changed, and Ubuntu was forced to no longer distribute Firefox in a native .deb package. We have found that, after numerous improvements, Firefox now performs just as well as the native .deb package did.
Thunderbird is also a snap this cycle in order for the maintainers to get security patches delivered faster.
Additionally, Freeshow is an Electron-based application. Electron-based applications cannot be packaged in the Ubuntu repositories in that they cannot be packaged in a traditional Debian source package. While such apps do have a build system to create a .deb binary package, it circumvents the source package build system in Launchpad, which is required when packaging for Ubuntu. However, Electron apps also have a facility for creating snaps, which can be uploaded and included. Therefore, for Freeshow to be included in Ubuntu Studio, it had to be packaged as a snap.Also, to keep theming consistent, all included themes are snapped in addition to the included .deb versions so that snaps stay consistent with out themes.
We are working with Canonical to make sure that the quality of snaps goes up with each release, so we please ask that you give snaps a chance instead of writing them off completely.
Q: If I install this Beta release, will I have to reinstall when the final release comes out?A: No. If you keep it updated, your installation will automatically become the final release. However, if Audacity returns to the Ubuntu repositories before final release, then you might end-up with a double-installation of Audacity. Removal instructions of one or the other will be made available in a future post.
Q: Will you make an ISO with {my favorite desktop environment}?A: To do so would require creating an entirely new flavor of Ubuntu, which would require going through the Official Ubuntu Flavor application process. Since we’re completely volunteer-run, we don’t have the time or resources to do this. Instead, we recommend you download the official flavor for the desktop environment of your choice and use Ubuntu Studio Installer to get Ubuntu Studio – which does *not* convert that flavor to Ubuntu Studio but adds its benefits.
Q: What if I don’t want all these packages installed on my machine?A: We now include a minimal install option. Install using the minimal install option, then use Ubuntu Studio Installer to install what you need for your very own content creation studio.
this week in Oksasenkatu 11 Helsinki:Wednesday - Friday: both exhibitions (Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen : [proximity] sensing in, sensing outMalte Steiner : Abolute Power : Ohnmacht) open from 12:00 - 18:00Friday the 20th 17:00 - 19:00 : Deep Listening session with Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen (please sign up on info[at]tmkm[dot]dk)Saturday - Sunday: both exhibitions open from 12:00 - 17:00(picture below is from Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen exhibition [proximity] sensing in, sensing out)