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

[Hank Stanglow]

Hi. I have been following Ubuntu Studio since 2011 and it holds a 
special place in my heart. I am sad to see development slow down, but I 
also feel like changes in the way software is packaged and distributed 
made this inevitable.

I stopped using Ubuntu Studio a couple years ago for a few reasons: 
there were some annoying bugs in XFCE/Thunar, I wanted more recent 
packages, and I wanted a better experience using non-gtk tools.

I do multimedia work and that's why I chose Ubuntu Studio. Having a good 
audio setup was important, but I also needed drawing and video tools as 
well. IMO, the best and most available FOSS tools for drawing and video 
are Krita and KdenLive, which were always buggy on gtk-based systems. 
However, with growing emphasis on Snaps and Flatpacks, software is 
becoming both distribution and desktop environment agnostic. These days 
a Linux user can get the best of everything regardless of their 
distribution of choice. And that, I think, makes me wonder if I will 
ever need Ubuntu Studio again. Even if Ubuntu Studio had a vibrant team 
to keep up this distribution the question "is it needed?" would still 
persist. Honestly, I don't even use KX Studio for audio anymore, so this 
is not a problem specific to Ubuntu Studio.

Everyone should feel great about the role Ubuntu Studio played in moving 
GNU/Linux/FOSS forward. Linux and Ubuntu are better than ever for 
multimedia artists like myself.

Thanks for everything!