[ubuntu-studio-devel] Ubuntu Studio Council & Participation

[Erich Eickmeyer]

Hi all,

I just noticed the latest blog post with the need for new leadership for Ubuntu Studio. I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring and see if you could use my expertise.

Just a little about myself, I have been an audio engineer in various forms for the past 24 years, and recently I have been utilizing Jack with Ardour and Calf Studio Gear for live audio production. I am currently employed as a Production Director for a large church in the Seattle, Washington (USA) area, primarily managing production at our satellite campus located in Seattle proper. Prior to that I was at a large church in Idaho, and have worked in a production capacity for the University of Idaho.

With audio engineering, video production is also a large part of my job. Additionally, I have been a professional photographer off/on for nearly 10 years, utilizing Darktable, Krita, GIMP, and other tools. As you can imagine, distributions like Ubuntu Studio are very important to me as someone who utilizes its tools for a living.

Just to boot, I am a participant on the Jupiter Broadcasting network’s Linux Unplugged and Ask Noah shows, and am an acquaintance of both Alan Pope and Martin Wimpress as a result. At one point in time, I was a producer of content for Jupiter Broadcasting, and have appeared on JB’s famous but now defunct Linux Action Show.

I’ve been using Linux near constantly for the past 6 years, having tried my hand at Slackware nearly 22 years ago, and then Ubuntu about 10 years ago. At the time, Ubuntu did not meet my needs as well as Mac OS X did, and at one point in time I was too poor to upgrade my macs, so I switched to Linux. I use macOS, Windows, and Linux every day in my job and home life, so I’m very well-versed and knowledgeable in the usage of all three.

I have been seeing several out-of-date packages in Ubuntu Studio. For instance, Calf had a new release as recently as November (0.90.0), but the Ubuntu packages seems to be stuck on a much older version (0.60). While it might be too late to get the new version in for Bionic, I think we could provide a backports PPA similar to Kubuntu for these situations. That’s just one idea I have among many.

I haven’t done much .deb packaging, but I’ve become fairly well-versed in .rpm packaging since I’ve been using Fedora Jam lately. That said, I’m ready to switch and see how I can take what I’ve learned elsewhere and apply it here.

So, with that, it would be my honor and privilege to assist with providing direction and leadership to Ubuntu Studio in whatever way I can. My job can be fairly demanding, but it’s only part-time and since its technologies can be augmented by Ubuntu Studio’s tools, I’m more than happy to give my time since it would be mutually beneficial.

Thanks,
Erich Eickmeyer