[ubuntu-studio-devel] Some thoughts, frustrations, and considerations.

Erich Eickmeyer erich at ericheickmeyer.com
Fri Sep 21 15:55:13 UTC 2018


Hi everybody,

As many of you know, Eylul stepped-down from the core leadership of
Ubuntu Studio on Saturday. With Eylul's departure, we lost one of our
key developers. She had planned on stepping-down, so this was not
completely unforseen, and she isn't the only one who wishes to depart.
He can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that Len was
looking at stepping-down when the timing was right as well.  This has me
rethinking some of the ideas we've had with the less-than handful of
people we have working on this project.

When Ubuntu Studio was born, it started as an add-on to the existing
GNOME-based Ubuntu install. Those that were there can correct me if I'm
wrong, but as I understand it, the first ISO came about with Xfce as the
desktop when Ubuntu went to Unity. With Unity no longer a major factor,
I asked the team to explore other desktops, and, with Len's
recommendation, Plasma was chosen as a viable alternative to Xfce.

Unfortunately, getting an ISO spun-up with Plasma as the desktop has
proven to be more of a pain than previously thought because we'd
essentially be creating a new "flavor" of Ubuntu which has to go through
all of the steps necessary to make that happen. With our dwindling
numbers and lack of time to dedicate to a project that got too tedious,
I recommend we abandon this project.

Also, creating Ubuntu Studio Welcome and the boutique to replace
-installer have proved to be nearly impossible without help that I
simply don't have.

Another frustration is that it is nearly impossible to get packages
updated, and if they're synced from Debian it is even more difficult.
For example, I worked on and got the new version of Calf (0.90.0 which
has been out since November with a point release to 0.90.1 in July)
updated, and since it gets pulled-in from Debian, I had to go to the
Debian Multimedia Team to get it updated, only to find that there was
someone already working on it without the point release (0.90.0), but it
hadn't yet made its way into Debian Testing or Unstable. The upstream
developers had released it in November and it's STILL not in Debian
Testing or Unstable. It shouldn't take 10 months to update a major
release of a project. Fedora doesn't have this problem because they
don't have an upstream project from which to pull as they ARE the
upstream, and already have the 0.90.1 package! Updating a project
shouldn't have so many hoops through which to jump!

The biggest roadblock we have is the lack of active MOTUs on the team. I
would apply, but I don't feel as though I'm qualified since I've had
nobody to mentor me in package development. Additionally, we've been
unable to attract any dedicated MOTUs.

If Ubuntu Studio is to survive, I believe it might be time for another
approach which would bring Ubuntu Studio closer to its roots. My
proposal is to keep Ubuntu Studio's ISO as Xfce, but to develop
metapackages that bolt Ubuntu Studio on to an existing install of
another flavor. There are a couple of different approaches to this: 1)
the metapackage pulls-in the required configureation files to simply add
some essential configuration such as the lowlatency kernel selection in
GRUB, or , or 2) pull-in said configuration and rebrand the install to
Ubuntu Studio. The other day, I took an afternoon and packaged something
to demonstrate the #2 option above on a default Ubuntu (GNOME) install
and it worked perfectly. This would require at least one MOTU to be
dedicated to this project.

There is yet another option, one that I don't like, but it was proposed
from outside this mailing list when I first got involved. Perhaps Ubuntu
Studio, as a downloadable flavor, has run its course. We're no longer in
a world where people have to download whole ISOs to get the software
they need quickly since it's all available in the repos and most people
have a high-speed connection. This world no longer requires that every
single piece of software be included in an ISO. Additionally, community
support is dwindling, and Ubuntu Studio has gone from the premiere
multimedia distribution to the one people are staying away from, with
referrals to what are now arguably more successful projects for audio
(KXStudio and AVLinux). Perhaps it's time to sunset the flavor.

I'd appreciate your thoughts. Overall, I understand now why there has
been so much burn-out in the Ubuntu Studio development community.


Erich

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