They were considering disappearing some time ago, they didn't, they switched to Plasma and now they seem to be stronger than ever. I'm talking about Ubuntu's multimedia edition or flavor, and a few moments ago they just announced the launch of Ubuntu Studio 21.10 Impish Indri. If we look at the header image, which is the same one they share in the release notes, we can see the KDE and Plasma logo, and it is not because they are 25 years old today, but because they decided to make a change and it deserves the shame to make things clear.
Ubuntu Studio has been using Xfce as a graphical environment for years, but in his opinion, Plasma is just as light and at the same time offers greater productivity, so moved to KDE software. Because of the change, and although there are cases of people who have updated from 20.04 (Xfce), they do not recommend doing so. Desktop aside, if this edition stands out for something, it is for its applications, and in Ubuntu Studio 21.10 they have taken the opportunity to update multimedia application packages.
Highlights of Ubuntu Studio 21.10
- Linux 5.13.
- Supported for 9 months.
- Plasma 5.22.5. We remember that it is not recommended to upload from Ubuntu Studio 20.04 because they changed desktop / graphical environment.
- Studio Controls has continued to develop as a separate project and has been updated to version 2.2.7. This version has a totally new design and features, including JACK over network and MIDI over network.
- Updated multimedia applications, such as Ardor 6.9, OBS Studio 27.0.1, Carla 2.4.0 and many others that have not picked up in the release notes.
Ubuntu Studio 21.10 It is now available en this link. Existing users can also upgrade from the same operating system as long as Groovy Gorilla (20.10) or Hirsute Hippo (21.04) is used. The project does not offer support to update from the version released in April 2020 due to the problems that could cause uploading to a new version with a different desktop.