Focal Fossa 20.04.1 LTS

This is the latest Long-Term Support release of Ubuntu Studio. It is supported for 3 years (until April 2023)

Checksums and Alternative Downloads

Release Notes

Other Ways to Obtain

Ubuntu Studio’s default ISO uses the Xfce desktop environment. If you wish to use other desktop environments, Ubuntu Studio can be installed on Ubuntu or any official Ubuntu flavor using the Ubuntu Studio Installer.

Note: Xubuntu is not mentioned since Ubuntu Studio’s ISO and Xubuntu both use Xfce

System Requirements

The minimum of RAM required for Ubuntu Studio is 1 GB, but it is highly recommended that you have at least 4 GB, as some applications use up a lot of RAM. The minimum of disk space required is around 10 GB, but that is just for installing the system.

Try before Installing

The Ubuntu Studio ISO is a live image, which means you can boot it and use all the default applications without actually installing it. Just burn a DVD, or create a bootable USB stick and try it out.

Boot from DVD

Download the image above. Burn it to DVD using your favorite software. Information on burning to CD/DVD can be found here.

Make sure to set your BIOS to boot from CD/DVD. Information on troubleshooting booting from CD/DVD can be found here.

Boot from your newly burned DVD and follow the instructions.

Boot from USB Stick

There is a bug that affects creating USB installers for the 15.10 release, so using UNetbootin or the like might not work. On Linux systems one can use the command line tool dd or mkusb instead. What they do is basically copy the image as is, not only the files but also the filesystem, onto the USB stick. Sort of like burning a DVD.

For 16.04 and later though, you may follow these steps:

Download the image above. Use software like UNetbootin to create your bootable USB stick (included in Debian/Ubuntu repositories). If using Universal USB Installer, use version 1.9.0.8 or above.

Make sure to set your BIOS to boot from USB. Commonly, the USB stick is recognized as a bootable hard disk, and to boot from it, either set it first in the BIOS boot order, or find a way to select which device to boot from using a key stroke while starting the computer (not all motherboards support booting from USB stick. Also, not all USB stick are bootable). More information on this here.

Boot from your newly created bootable USB stick and follow the instructions.

Fresh Installation

A fresh installation from DVD is the recommended installation method. The DVD image is about 2.6 GB, and can either be burned to DVD, or used to create a bootable USB stick.

Check ISO for corruption using checksum

After downloading the ISO, make sure to check it for corruption. Several methods are available, we recommend using SHA256. Go to the download directory, and use the command line program sha256sum. The output should be identical to the respective checksum found at the link below the downloads above. Read more about checking SHA256 sums.

Using wireless while installing

If you are using wireless to connect to the internet, you may first want to boot into the live system, connect to the internet and install from there. There is a launcher for installing Ubuntu Studio on the desktop.

Notes on partitioning and dual booting

If you are intending to dual boot (keeping more than one operating system on the same computer), you will need to know how to partition manually. Otherwise, the default option presented during the installation is the best choice (will overwrite everything on the disk). Information on dual booting can be found here.