Mubuntu is the tentative name of a Multimedia derivative of Ubuntu, currently being planned. This page is the starting point for these plans.

Ultimate Goal

To build a build a solid Audio/Video editing distro based on Ubuntu-Gnome.

Status

Work has begun on sorting through the packages. The main work is currently being led by C.Kontros. We are using Reconstructor at the moment to do some test ISO builds and to discover the limitations of this application. Cory is effectively the lead unless anyone has any reasonable objection to this, as he has experience leading people and has enough spare time to handle it at the moment.

The plan at the moment is:

• Two metapackages, one for the base, and one for the non-free stuff in multiverse
• Use only packages in official Ubuntu repositories
• Use the 686 kernel

Input has come from LaserJock on the best approach to this process. Collaboration is occuring in #ubuntu-studio on Freenode, but can be moved to a separate channel if it becomes to crowded. The #mubuntu channel was already registered to someone else a while ago... Not sure if they are involving themselves in this.

Polls for User Opinions

• [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=266678 1 - ISO format: CD or DVD]

• [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=266709 2 - System arch: x86, AMD64, or PPC]

• [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=266736 3 - Kernel]

• [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=267220 4 - Desktop environment]

Initial Thoughts

Things we need to consider:

• Artwork
  • Theme
  • Color scheme
  • Wallpaper
• Default Desktop Environment
  • Menus
• Kernel requirements
• Packaging
  • Missing apps
  • Outdated apps
  • Apps to remove
  • Metapackages
• Documentation

Contributors

• C.Kontros (MMA)
  • PROJECT LEAD
  • Planning
  • Art
  • Testing

• DanaOlson

  • Planning
  • Packaging (limited time/experience)

• ForestBond

  • Working further upstream
  • Advice/opinion
• Ttoine
  • testing (with interested sound engineers of two professional studios)
  • writing documentation ; I started on my website about music and ubuntu ; only in french at this time
  • providing hardware is possible

• ChrisWagner

  • Packaging - At this point, I haven't played with Linux audio stuff enough to know what will need packaging, but I'll try to help if someone points me in the right direction.
  • Testing
• ???ADDYOURNAMEHERE???

We currently need someone to handle theming and building of a webpage. Who ever does this, this should be their main focus. - C.Kontros

Validity

Is this project worthwhile? There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interest. On top of that, the only thing we really need are more and better apps, more LASH integration, and a better kernel.. Basically anything on the Studio Setup page of UbuntuStudio.com... The kernel will be improving over time as portions get merged into the main kernel. The only thing we need then is a good config file and have Ubuntu's devs add it and compile it as an optional kernel. This stuff doesn't warrant an entirely separate distro. Not even a metapackage in my opinion.. Thoughts?BR

• - Nobody should be required to edit any special configuration files or turn on/off certain daemons to be able to record a song. At very least, we should have a meta-package; but with mainline Ubuntu becoming increasingly heavy-weight, then there probably is room for a derivative distro. Having a derivative would make for better "marketing", as well. I can imagine a lot of musicians - even people that haven't used Linux before - perhaps looking to save a buck, would give it a try, especially considering the success of Ubuntu. As a anything less than a derivative Ubuntu distro, most people wouldn't hear of it. - ChrisWagnerBRBR

  - I agree. I guess this project is going to happen anyhow, so we can ignore my ramblings. - DanaOlsonBRBR

  - I maked some trials with a small french team : it is possible to make a lot of things with a good meta-package, installing the kernel and selected good apps. And providing "secondary" meta-packages with categories of softwares. It works via a repository we have made for testing purposes. Documentation is only in french à this time. Don't hesitate to contact me to know more.BRBR

  - Ubuntu is easier to set up than Fedora Core 5 or Gentoo. I have had to give up on installing Fedora (for Planet CCRMA) because the installer is broken. And I wasn't exactly looking forward to rpm hell anyway. and Gentoo takes some work to set up and some work to maintain, even though it has much to recommend it in other ways. The gentoo graphical installer is broken too, although at least there are other methods you can use. Demudi, being based on mainstream Debian, is not the place to look for cutting edge stuff, and it will also leave you having to deal with the debian community when you want support, which I haven't always found to be a good experience. I use Ubuntu on two other computers and would have no trouble choosing it for my DAW if a suitable kernel was easily available and debs were available compiled with LASH, Jack etc. where appropriate. - RobertPersson2BRBR

Goals

Audio Workstation

Biggest contribution we can make to desktop audio / multimedia is with integration. Press upstream developers for lash support; that's a big piece of the integration issue. -LASH is definitely a MUST. I have reached out to the debian maintainer for seq24 and ZynAddSubFX I think to build with LASH support. This won't make it to Edgy I am afraid. And I have had no response yet.

Video Workstation

Currently the state of "open" video editing seems to be lacking. There are some promising apps coming (Diva - http://www.diva-project.org/) but none seem to be at a really usable level yet. Am I mistaken? - C.Kontros

You can have a look at this projetc, http://garbure.org/ . They made some live cds for multimedia, and one is for video editing. So just see the list of apps they use.

JACK

Do we want to start jackd automatically? This is probably not useful to anyone not doing audio work all the time.

• - No. I don't see why we would want that. LASH handles JACK, doesn't it? The only possible reason I could see would be if we can use it as the sound server over everything else (no ESD, no aRtsd, etc), but I don't think that is possible. Besides this, I don't know how we would detect what the optimum settings for JACK will be for everyone's PC... That's an exercise best left to the user, I think.BRBR

  - I think the most important thing is that JACK "Just Works" for users with as little hassel and setup as possible, in true Ubuntu fashion. - Derick_eisenhardt(2006-09-17@23:47CDT)BRBR

  - I agree, but I don't know how this will be possible. Everyone has a different soundcard, and JACK itself does no kind of detection of settings. Plus, tons of users in the forums are using on-board crap audio controllers, and they don't generally work well... One set of settings won't work, and we can't possibly guess what will and won't work for every single card. If someone is running an amazing card on an old Pentium 2 system, the settings would have to be different than the same card on a Xeon, for example. Or a dual AMD64 system with on-board sound card is going to be crap too. I think this is part of the reason why JACK itself doesn't auto-config itself. Too many possibilities. We could try with a setting of about 10ms latency, as it should work for most people... But then what sampling rate do you use? People are going to want 48KHz, but some cards only support 44.1KHz... See the problem here?BRBR

  - I suggest that a jack control gui could be launched at startup, but the user has to start jack by himself (ttoine)BRBR

Menus

I think that the key to having this a usable system will be to organize the menus properly - music apps, video apps, graphics apps should not be all in one big jumbled mess. I am not familiar enough with the menu system to know the best way to approach it, but a change to every package I think is not required. We can just add additional menu entries or some such.

• - It is possible to let people organize by themselves with the menu editor of their DE, when provided... Or to make a script that can redifine automatically the .desktop files.BRBR

  - Since we are going to use Gnome is the current structure of "Sound & Video" adequate? I dont know if actually splitting the menus into "Sound" and "Video" would help. See [http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/2954/menuaw3.jpg screenshot]. - C.KontrosBRBR

Desktop Environment

What DE should we use? I think it should be functional, and really, I don't think there's much benefit to dropping from GNOME to something else, especially if we end up with a -rt kernel. KDE is out of the question, either we stick with GNOME like standard Ubuntu, or we drop to something lighter like Blackbox/Openbox/Ion/Fluxbox. Easily maintainable from our point of view, but also a pain for ease of use (IMHO). Thoughts?

Dana and I have decided that we are going to go with Gnome. Demudi did it, so it is possiable for us to do it also. With the intensity of the applications that we will be running fairly current hardware should be used. Therefore Gnome should be a fine choice. Further decisions should be made with using Gnome in mind. The challenge will be retaining the admin functions of Ubuntu's Gnome desktop while trimming down the size of the install disk. Demudi was fairly stripped down in this aspect. Its .iso is 558 megs. -C.Kontros

• - I think XFCE could be a real good alternative if we're looking for a DE that's a little more lightweight, but still very usable. -Derick_eisenhardt(2006-09-17@23:42CDT)BRBR

  - I think that http://fvwm-crystal.org/ looks very good and more lightweight than XFce... I tested XFce against GNOME and there was little to no difference - in fact, XFce was giving me more Xruns with the same tests. I don't know what I was doing wrong, because I just logged into XFce and ran the same apps as I did in GNOME.BRBR

  - Thinking to the lot of people making music with Apple DE, I just want to ask to take care at this choice : because they have the habit to work with very easy to handle DE, where you can find what you need very quickly even if you don't know how it works. I mean : for me, Gnome is a good compromise between the different free or not free DE, including Unix DE, and is easy to learn. I am not sure that the lighter DE are the good way to catch the attention of people with the habit of fresh and very fonctionnal DE. I know that Gnome is not the better choice because of the miss of a gstreamer-jack plugin, and because some important programms are not writed for it. Perhaps the good choice could be to propose a "default" DE, and let the possibility to peeple to install the DE they want with a meta-package.BRBR

  - I set up a very old laptop with XFCE because I thought the payoff in terms of performance would be worth it. The machine in question was a 266MHz G3 Powerbook with 182MB memory. In the end I found the shortcomings of XFCE too annoying and I installed all the Gnome packages and turned it into a normal Ubuntu box. If someone is geek enough to deal with fluxbox or whatever then they should be more than capable of installing it with synaptic and choosing it at the gdm login screen whenever they need that bit of extra performance. That way they will still have an environment that will enable them to do all the other day-to-day computing without all those headaches. RobertPersson2BRBR

Desktop Theme

Personally, I think that whatever theme we choose should match Ardour, or Ardour somehow be coaxed into looking like the theme because Ardour is the central cruz of audio under Linux (aside from JACK). Really. Ardour is the only choice for a decent multitrack application of pro studio caliber. I don't mind having a dark theme like Ardour, it might be better on the eyes when staring at the screen for hours... But do apps like seq24 follow the theme then? This is a rather low priority, but it'd be nice if Ardour would obey the system theme by default anyhow.

• - I currently like the "feel" of the screenshot I have posted of test disks. http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=266101 A kinda Black/Yellow/White theme. Light on the yellow. Maybe good for highlighting things? I need to get some screenshots of a current Ardour. I plan on having a feel close to that.-C.Kontros

  - Well, perhaps we can spend less time on that by choosing on http://www.gnome-look.org/ some theme that are in the way we need. When the only thing to do will be to make artwork, I think the most important will be done : a fonctionnal way to make music with Ubuntu Linux. It will be more easy to find people to make customized art-work when we can show what is Mubuntu.

Theme

Icons

Wallpaper

Bootsplash

Splashscreen

GDM/Logon

Packages Needed

So, basicaly, we spoke about two meta-packages for the basics, one for common packages, and one for multiverse/restricted packages. I think we must do packages with the essential, and then, study the possibility to make other meta-packages for midi, video, etc... The idea it that not everybody as the same need of packages, so, perhaps the best way could be to organize meta-packages so that people can easily choose and install only what they need. I make a start of list here :

• Mubuntu -> install all the meta-packages below

• Mubuntu-basics
  • jackd (the jack daemon, one program "to rule them all")
  • qjacktcl (good gui to control jackd)
  • ardour (essential tool for audio recording)
  • ubuntustudiolauncher (launch applications in the good way for real time)
• Mubuntu-multiverse
  • (start the list here)
• Mubuntu-soundwork
  • rezound (tool to edit wave)
  • jamin (mastering tool)
• Mubuntu-midi
  • rosegarden (good midi sequencer)
  • hydrogen (rythm sequencer)
  • seq24 (midi sequencer)
• Mubuntu-synth
  • ams (alsa modular synth)
  • zynaddsubfx (good synth)
• Mubuntu-effects
  • omins (set of ladspa effects)
  • tap-plugins (Tom Szilagyi's set of ladspa effects)
  • jack-rack (allow to make rack of ladspa effetc, patched in jack)
  • swh-plugins (Steve Harris’s set of ladspa effects)
  • mcp-plugins (for alsa modulat synth)
  • fil-plugins (set of ladspa effects)
  • cmt (set of ladspa effects)
  • caps (set of ladspa effects)

Don't hesitate to comment, complete the list, etc... Of course, that's just an idea. (ttoine)

• My thoughts on this are the fact that if I want to make music, I need the following: ardour, jack, seq24, zynaddsubfx, hydrogen at minimum. So to get these, I install the metapackages that contain them - mubuntu-basics, mubuntu-seq, mubuntu-mastering, etc. and I end up having EVERYTHING installed anyhow. So either we simply use one big package, or we use many packages that depend on different *sets* of applications. If I want seq24, I don't want Rosegarden. But installing a package how you have laid it out, I get both. I don't want both. Do you see the problem? If we get both, then the division into many smaller metapackages by type is just pointless. --DanaOlson

LASH

This package probably needs to go into Debian, if we want the extra line added to /etc/services (that file is maintained by Debian). I (Forest) currently have the packaging part done. I just need to get it accepted by Debian, and have not been through that process in the past. I also need to chat with netbase maintainers to get /etc/services modified (one additional port for lash -- lashd crashes without it).

netbase maintainer: Anthony Towns <ajt AT SPAMFREE debian DOT org>

-Debian has lashd, as does Edgy. Is this your doing? It still does not work correctly. What do we need to do to fix it?

-Must we wait for LASH ? can we now provide a working solution with what is available, or for will be for Edgy ? (ttoine)

Kernel with realtime preemption

Soon, the realtime patches will be integrated into the mainline kernel. [http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3627831]

That is still 18 months away, but at the rate this project is moving, that still may beat us to the punch.

-Perhaps we can work on an optimised kernell, with the optimisations suggested ont the ubuntusudio project. It is possible to make it available, I did it, and it works well. There's just a small bug with the splashy configuration at startup, that's why I don't speak too much about it on forums.

A meta package to ease the installationof the "base"

Just need to define what is very important, and make a meta-package in order to make it easy for every one to get the kernell configured and basic softwares installed, such as qjacktcl, ardour, etc...

Comments

• The UbuntuStudio page previously contained a (very bare) spec for what would basically be the same thing as Mubuntu. The wiki page for UbuntuStudio has been set to redirect to this page, and I notified the author of the spec (as registered at https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntu-studio). - ChrisWagner

• I will make a quotation of one of my sound engineer friend : "no matter what it looks, if you can work a day on, if it is fonctionnal, and if it sounds great". Do you think it is possible with Ubuntu (or Mubuntu) ?