Friday, April 27, 2012

Ubuntu Studio 12.04

Ubuntu Studio 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) was released this week. I decided to upgrade my graphics workstation, even though I'd only been on 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) a short time. I am keeping my audio workstation on 11.04 for the time being, too many music projects going and don't want to take the chance of an upgrade going awry.

One of the big things available with Pangolin is Gnome 3.4. I gave it a quick try and thought it was HORRIBLE. Never again! I've been using xfce4 for a while now, and it's lean and lightweight and not trying to be flashy and glitzy. I like the minimalist desktop xfce4 provides:







Version 2.8 of GIMP has gone RC (release candidate), and should be generally available soon. It has some nifty new features, including the most requested feature -- single window mode. I hadn't been able to compile GIMP 2.8 on older versions of Ubuntu Studio, but there is a package available for 12.04, so it was one of the first things I installed. Sadly, it still doesn't support 16-bit color.



Which brings me to the other bit of good news about Pangolin -- Krita 2.4 is directly available now! It's my favorite digital art tool, as I noted in the previous post. It can handle 16-bit color, as well as CMYK colorspace, and even has some vector tools (although I prefer to use Inkscape for that). Krita has quite a few projects for the Google Summer of Code, it should have some nifty new features soon, including infinite canvas (like MyPaint) and perspective drawing.

Do I know how to party on a Friday or what?

4 comments:

  1. good post.
    if the last window desks are too heavy, I think = you.
    Gimp 2.8 to my mind has failed to prioritize the tools you really need.
    The display was not only necessary, or pressure curves.
    in my opinion have thrown away the time.
    gimp-for-painters has not been implemented ...

    Krita is the best project with MyPaint drawing :)
    Kisses

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  2. Krita is my favorite for painting now, but I still use MyPaint for some things, too, it's good for sketching and gesture drawing (I like the infinite canvas for that).

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  3. Hi brett, you advise me some ableton live style sequencer for linux?
    I need to have virtual instruments. and real-time record for the guitar.
    long time ago playing the electric guitar Estyle death metal :D
    thank you!.
    I love your music
    Kisses Yuli.

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  4. I think the closest you will find to Ableton Live is LMMS:

    http://lmms.sourceforge.net/

    The sequencer I use is Rosegarden, as I note in some earlier posts, it's good film score music. I also use MixBus for all recording and mixing (it's a commercial version of Ardour).

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