The times they are a-changin'

So, there's been some changes afoot and I figured it's time to tell you about them.

I no longer do music tech. I graduated in July with a 2:1. I have now started a Master's course in Creative Technologies. I'm still at DMU, but now I'm working in the Institute Of Creative Technologies. You can find some links to various IOCT-related things over on the right.

What this means, is that this blog is now going to broaden its scope to cover all kinds of creative technology, rather than just those that are music related. I'm not changing the name though, as that's too much hassle.

Also, for those that don't know, Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) is being released in a few days. I plan to once again do a complete reinstall, as that should fix various things I've broken in the course of using Feisty for the past six months. I shall obviously give a full report on that endeavour when it's all over.

"Upgrade" to Ubuntu Studio.

So, seeing as it gets asked in the forums a lot, I thought I'd stick a guide here on how to "upgrade" from regular Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) to Ubuntu studio. This gives you the option of converting your regular Feisty install to Studio (meaning you don't lose any configuration, etc that you would doing a fresh install) or it's for if you don't have the option of burning the Studio .iso to DVD (either you don't have a DVD burner, you can't manage to download the .iso or you just don't want to waste a whole DVD on 900MB). So here goes.

First add the Ubuntu Studio repositories by running these two commands:

# sudo su -c 'echo deb http://archive.ubuntustudio.org/ubuntustudio feisty main >> /etc/apt/sources.list'
# wget -q http://archive.ubuntustudio.org/ubuntustudio.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

Then use your preferred method (synaptic, apt-get, aptitude, etc) to install these packages:

ubuntustudio-desktop
ubuntustudio-audio
ubuntustudio-audio-plugins
ubuntustudio-graphics
ubuntustudio-video
ubuntustudio-artwork
ubuntustudio-gdm-theme
ubuntustudio-icon-theme
ubuntustudio-look
ubuntustudio-session-splashes
ubuntustudio-sounds
ubuntustudio-screensaver
ubuntustudio-theme
ubuntustudio-wallpapers
usplash-theme-ubuntustudio
wired

If you just want to copy and paste, chuck this (yes, the whole damn line) into a command line:

# sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-desktop ubuntustudio-audio ubuntustudio-audio-plugins ubuntustudio-graphics ubuntustudio-video ubuntustudio-artwork ubuntustudio-gdm-theme ubuntustudio-icon-theme ubuntustudio-look ubuntustudio-session-splashes ubuntustudio-sounds ubuntustudio-screensaver ubuntustudio-theme ubuntustudio-wallpapers usplash-theme-ubuntustudio wired

Or if you just want audio stuff (no themes, etc):

# sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-desktop ubuntustudio-audio ubuntustudio-audio-plugins wired

Though it would really be a hell of a lot simpler just to fire up Synaptic and do a search for "ubuntustudio" and then "wired".

This is adapted from ep2011's post in this thread.

I also recommend checking out LMMS, it's a programme similar to Fruity Loops and is pretty simple to use and can yield some great results. It's not in Ubuntu's simplified "add/remove programmes" app, you have to either get it via synaptic or do a "sudo apt-get install lmms" (or aptitude or whatever). Also, when it installs, you won't get a menu entry made for you. You'll have to right click on your "Applications" menu and hit "edit menus" and add a new launcher there (this is assuming you're running GNOME, which you probably will be if you're running Ubuntu Studio. If you use KDE, I'm sure you know how to edit the menus. If not, ask on the forums). A graphic you can use for the menu icon can be found here.

-Andy

A learning experience

So, on tuesday the mUbuntu project took its first few tentative steps and I introduced some Leicester college students to the world of OSS and Linux. All seemed to go well, until we sent them off for lunch and they never returned. Not so much of a problem for me as my part of the day had finished, but a major problem for Martin, who was planning on teaching them about Tracker software in the afternoon.

All in all, it's been a learning experience. I've learnt:

• Macs have an odd bug which means that if they're not connected to the internet while you install the OS, they'll decide it's 1904 and Linux doesn't like that...
• I have no clue how to shutdown a mac running OS 9
• As simple as it looks, ZynSubAddFX will slow an iMac down quite easily
• As impressive as Linux can be, it's hard to impress with it quickly other than playing with Beryl and going "look at teh cube!!!11"
• Don't let unsupervised college students go for lunch when what you're teaching them isn't mandatory...

Oh well, Live and learn!

In other news, despite my original post about not wanting to switch to Ubuntu studio just yet, I have switched! I discovered I could "upgrade" to it without losing anything, so I did. It's pretty damn awesome, even if I can't use XGL with the low-latency kernel. Even if you don't fancy using it, I highly recommend installing the theme as it's beautiful. My former theme, while similar and also beautiful, suffered from some readability problems, so this is perfect ^_^

More soon!

-Andy

Ubuntu Studio

So, I had a check today and it seems that Ubuntu Studio is now available! I haven't tried it, but it looks pretty damn cool. Don't think I'll bother installing it till it's time for the next Ubuntu upgrade (7.10), I've spent too much time messing about getting stuff working already :-P

If you fancy checking it out, there's a link over on the right to the home page.

-Andy