who want to use Ardour and other tools for music creation and
pro-audio work.
</p>
-<p>
- Unfortunately, Ubuntu has repeatedly caused major headaches for
- people who want to use Ardour. These problems have arisen from a
- combination of two basic issues:
-
- <ul>
- <li>Badly built packages of Ardour</li>
- <li>Poor system configuration related to JACK, which Ardour (and
- most other pro-audio tools on Linux) uses for audio and MIDI I/O.
- </li>
- </ul>
-</p>
<h2>High Level Recommendations for Ubuntu Users</h2>
<p>
- If you are really committed to using Ubuntu for pro-audio or music
- creation work, you should ....
-<p>
-<p>
- If you not yet committed to using Ubuntu for pro-audio or music
- creation work, you should probably consider using a different
- distribution that has a demonstrated history of not making life for
- users like you more complex than it needs to be. In particular you
- might want to consider a distribution such
- as <a href="http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html">AVLinux</a>
- or <a href="http://www.dickmacinnis.com/dreamstudio/">Dreamstudio</a>
- that is specifically focused on media creation work.
+ Currently, installing pro audio applications on vanilla Ubuntu requires
+ some configuration, in order for the user to gain realtime privilege
+ (read below).
+ Ubuntu Studio, which is an official flavor of Ubuntu, and thus shares
+ the repositories with Ubuntu, has this already configured.
+ Other distributions, such as KXStudio, and Dreamstudio are largely based
+ on Ubuntu, and like Ubuntu Studio, has these settings preconfigured, while
+ also containing customized versions of Ubuntu packages, which often are
+ more up to date.
</p>
-<h2>Problems with Ardour Packages</h2>
-
-<dl>
-<dt>What is the problem?</dt>
-<dd>
-<p>
- It is not possible to know whether the current package of Ardour
- released by Ubuntu has been correctly built or not. Ubuntu has a
- history of making packaging errors that lead to crashes, missing
- functionality and odd behaviour that is not present in the
+<h2>Installing Ardour</h2>
+ There may be unintended differences, and even bugs in Ubuntu native
+ packages, as a result of a different building method. For this reason,
+ Ardour developers highly recommend you to install the official
ready-to-run version of the program that you can get from <a
- href="http://ardour.org/download">ardour.org</a> (or in the packages
- released by other distributions)
-</p>
-<dt>Symptoms</dt>
-<dd>
-<p>
- Ardour starts up and basically runs, but you encounter subtle
- problems (for example, with plugin GUIs or with export, or with the
- use of certain specific plugins), or are missing functionality, or
- run into crashes.
-</p>
-</dd>
-<dt>How to Fix</dt>
-<dd>
-<p>
- Download the ready-to-run version
- from <a href="http://ardour.org/download">ardour.org</a>. Ardour's
- lead developer (and many of the most active members of our user
- community) will not provide support for, and will not investigate
- bugs reported for, Ubuntu's own packages of Ardour. The ardour.org
- packages install along side your distribution versions, and do not
- interfere or interact in anyway other than sharing your own personal
- Ardour settings and configuration choices.
-</p>
-</dd>
-</dl>
+ href="http://ardour.org/download">ardour.org</a>, as Ubuntu native
+ packages are not supported in official Ardour forums or other
+ support channels.
<h2>Problems with the interaction between PulseAudio and JACK</h2>
<dt>What is the problem?</dt>
<dd>
<p>
- The specific issues known at this time (spring 2013) are:
+ The specific issues known at this time for all flavors of Ubuntu
+ 12.04 and 12.10 are:
+</p>
<ul>
<li>a bug in PulseAudio that causes it not to give up the
- soundcard when JACK asks</li>
- <li>bad package dependency information that causes a critical
- package to be missing even when JACK and PulseAudio are
- installed</li>
- <li>a bug that causes JACK to freeze up when told to stop,
- causing issues with restarting</li>
+ soundcard when JACK asks (<a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/1163638">LP: #1163638</a>
+ (fixed in Ubuntu 13.04).</li>
</ul>
</dd>
<dt>Symptoms</dt>
<ul>
<li>Cannot start JACK (though see the next section for other
causes of this)</li>
- <li>JACK starts but there is no sound coming from Ardour or other
- applications that use JACK.</li>
</ul>
</p>
</dd>
<dt>How to fix</dt>
<dd>
+<p>
+ These bugs do not affect the upcoming 13.04 release, and earlier
+ releases (12.04 and 12.10) are in the process of being fixed.
+</p>
</dd>
</dl>
locking". This means that you, the user who starts JACK, must be
allowed access to these facilities. By default, Ubuntu does create a
user group that has this permission but ... it does not put new
- users into this group by default. Consequently, you will not have
- permission to run JACK in the way you should.
+ users into this group by default. Read more about why <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/TheAudioGroup">here</a>.
+ Consequently, you will not have permission to run JACK in the way you should.
</p>
</dd>
<dt>Symptoms</dt>
<dt>How to fix</dt>
<dd>
<p>
+ Make sure the file /etc/security/limits.d/audio.conf exists. If it is
+ named /etc/security/limits.d/audio.conf.disabled, rename it to the former.
Run the command <code>sudo usermod -a -G
audio <em>YOUR-LOGIN-NAME</em></code>. Then logout and login again.
+ On Ubuntu Studio the user is a member of audio group by default, but not
+ on other official flavors.
</p>
</dd>
</dl>
<h2>Reporting Issues</h2>
-<p>Given the difficulties in supporting Ubuntu and the limited time/resources of the Ardour team, the <code>Ubuntu Studio Project</code> has requested that issues and bug reports related to Ubuntu, Ubuntu Studio and other derivitives be directed to them.<p>
-<h4>Contact Information for Ubuntu Studio</h4>
+<p>Given the difficulties in supporting Ubuntu and the limited time/resources of the Ardour team, the <code>Ubuntu Studio Project</code> has requested that issues and bug reports related to Ubuntu, Ubuntu Studio and other derivitives be directed to them.</p>
+<h3>Contact Information for Ubuntu Studio</h3>
<p><a href="http://ubuntustudio.org" target="_blank">The Ubuntu Studio Homepage</a></p>
<p><a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=335" target="_blank">The Ubuntu Studio Forums.</a></p>
<p><a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudio/MailLists" target="_blank">Information on the Ubuntu Studio Mailing Lists.</a></p>
-<p><a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudio/IRC" target-"_blank">Information on the Ubuntu Studio IRC channel.</a> #ubuntustudio on irc.freenode.net</p>
+<p><a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudio/IRC" target="_blank">Information on the Ubuntu Studio IRC channel.</a> #ubuntustudio on irc.freenode.net</p>
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