Explain ubuntu studio like I'm 5

Support and Help
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Ubuntu Version: studio 25.10

Desktop Environment (if applicable): KDE plasma

Hello All,
I am very rusty with linux, took an outdated fedora class in college (and that was more than a decade ago), and have touched, but never delved deeply into a number of different flavors/spins of linux. I am trying desperately to find a linux that I can use as a daily driver. Pop OS failed to detect my hardware properly, and Bazzite has come tantalizingly close, but I’m stumbling over getting Davinci resolve to work properly in it and am running up against a wall where the tutorials are so convoluted and difficult to follow that my ADHD just causes my brain to overheat… long story short, I’m shopping for a new OS, one that recognizes my hardware, is fairly user friendly, and can do steam gaming, microphone, audio interface and screencap inputs through OBS, and can edit videos with davinci. one person, one lone person on another forum suggested ubuntu studio and claimed it was almost perfectly set up out of the box, but I need some info before I wipe several days of progress.

some particulars
CPU: Ryzen 9 9950X3D
GPU: AMD Radeon 9070XT
RAM: 16x4 DDR5 (6000 clock speed)
storage (4 NVME SSDs and 2 SATA SSDs, 4TB each), one for OS/user data, the rest are for games and content creation video libraries)

my intent is for a single boot bare metal implementation.

the issue I ran into with PopOS as it was explained to me was that even using the 24.04 beta the kernel was still too outdated to include drivers for my hardware, would 25.10 include a new enough kernel that it will work?

I tend to try to output my videos in davinci as H265, which I’ve seen only references to H264 in the at a glance documentation, how hard is it for a very very rusty linux fellow to implement h265?

also I’ve heard davinci for linux struggles with AAC audio, and virtually all of my accumulated video footage uses it, is there something I need to add to make that work or has that been sorted out?

having spent the past few days dealing with an atomic distro, I’m dealing with the fact that the fact I was told always work with the CLI in linux may no longer be the case as I had installed virtually everything except davinci through flatpaks.

with debian based distros in the past I have always used apt to get anything I needed, is this still the preferred method of using apt and adding repositories if something isn’t included in base or is ubuntu studio also transitioning more toward a flatpak model? also should I be installing updates (software and system) through APT or through gui tools?

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Just as with everything, there are pros and cons to different alternatives; and so you need to consider what you value as to what is best for you.

By apt you’re installing deb packages, which do require you to elevate privileges to install them (ie. you need to use sudo) thus you’re giving root access to whomever created the deb package you’ve chosen to install, so I don’t consider all deb packages as equal as you do, but consider their source far more than you imply you do (ie. I only add additional sources to my systems after a process of assessment and decision as to how far I’ll trust them, and if I should add restrictions/pinning etc to that additional third party source)

Some alternate package types run confined, meaning you have more security protections; thus there are benefits to them in regards security; but depending on how you use your system, where you have your sensitive data, you may get loads more protection from confined apps (ie. snaps or flatpaks) or gain little. Snap packages are more versatile than flatpaks anyway (flatpaks are desktop only by design, but Ubuntu runs on servers too), and Ubuntu has chosen snap as its second package choice. Ubuntu products (which include flavors like Ubuntu Studio) provide out of the box support for deb, and/or snap packages only; with the user being able to add other types too (flatpak, appimage etc). No Ubuntu Studio is not moving towards flatpak, and I can’t imagine why you’d ask that.

Ubuntu 25.10 has the latest kernel currently supported; ie. 6.17, which will soon be backported as the HWE option for 24.04; but to get newer kernels you’ll need to move to testing kernels OR a unstable release (currently resolute uses 6.17 anyway). Also when I mentioned Ubuntu 25.10; that includes all flavors too thus Ubuntu Studio 25.10.

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so is ubuntu studio considered more of a server distro than a personal distro if it uses snap instead of flatpak?
a lot of why I made the assumption that flatpaks are taking over linux is largely due to skuttlebutt across various forums. I’m trying to educate myself as I go but my eyes glaze over the instant I flip to official documentation, so my learning is largely coming from the community and yes, it’s linux, everyone has an opinion and they almost never agree on any of them, but it’s my quickest path to enlightenment.

so when we’re discussing snap packages, I’m assuming these are handled through a GUI app-store type system similar to how bazaar is the app-store that bazzite/fedora use to install flatpaks?

is there any meaningful difference in how flatpaks and snaps function at least as far as the average noob/casual user is concerned?

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Yes, that’s true.
Lots of opinions in every walk of life.

Why don’t you download the Ubuntu Studio 25.10 ISO, create a bootable USB and run a “Try Ubuntu Studio” session for an hour or two.

Test your hardware and see if it’s a good fit?

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I’ve seen a couple people suggest similar in passing. most of my experience of bootable media is sadly coming from bootable windows drives where hardware compatibility is sparse at best. would running ubuntu (or any linux distro for that matter) really give an accurate understanding of hardware and software compatibility? if so that might make this process a lot less painful than continually wiping my OS and starting from scratch.

also would that create any problems with drive mounting. with bazzite to get drives mount I had to create directories in /media/ and then use the disk manager to set hard mounting points to those directories (alternatively I’ve watched demos on editing the fstab file), are either of those going to be necessary to get accurate understanding of drive mounting behaviors? I assume with a live boot, any changes I make aren’t going to be persistent (I.E. survive system reboots)?

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snap packages work on both Servers and Desktops by design; flatpak is package format intended and thus somewhat restricted only to Desktop. Thus snap packages have a benefit for users that use both desktops & servers, as they’ll have similar setups/configs on both their desktop & server systems (snap is more an enterprise geared solution, rather than home-user that blogs on social media site is how I see it)

Ubuntu Studio is a DESKTOP flavor, and is NOT a server product. It comes with the KDE Plasma desktop!

Microsoft has offered live media for decades, but it was sold at very high price (thousands of dollars) and only large enterprises (thousands of machines under contract with Microsoft services) got versions included as part of their agreement, so the live media is really only known by most people as being a ‘Linux’ thing; it’s not; it’s just common with GNU/Linux distros as it was free to download and use rather than costing ~$5000.

It’s a great way to see how your hardware responds, and whilst a live system will respond differently (slower often; everything is being loaded from squashfs or compressed format thus decompression needs to occur before use, something that won’t be done on actual installed system for the most part), it allows you to see how it’ll respond on your actual hardware, if something will work out of the box etc, without you needing a machine to install stuff on.

I always run a live system of the release I’m upgrading to, on something that already runs Ubuntu before I actually plan and start the actual release-upgrade that will move my install to that release… ie. I use it myself regularly.

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You don’t have to wipe anything to run and test a live session.

The whole point of a live session is to allow the user to make an informed decision.

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You can make a bootable USB with persistence.
Plenty of info scattered round the internet.
I’ve selected this one because it mentions mkusb.

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Have you spent any time browsing the Ubuntu Studio web site?

Ubuntu Studio web site

These are the video applications that come “out of the box” with Ubuntu Studio. They may fit your needs.

Ubuntu Studio video applications

It is my opinion that whatever Linux distribution you install you will also have to install Davinci Resolve separately. You will need to follow the instructions of the developers.

There is another matter that you should be aware of. Ubuntu Studio 25.10 is supported until July 2026. Then you will have to upgrade to Ubuntu Studio 26.04 which will be supported until April 2029. Questions on upgrading are best asked by opening another topic. The same applies to questions about the Ubuntu release schedule and support life for Ubuntu versions

The advantage of running a live/try session is that you can test that Ubuntu Studio detects and uses all your hardware.

Regards

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Using any live Linux should not affect any installed system on another drive as long as the user does not mount the drive/partition to access.

External drives on Debian/Ubuntu and derivatives are usually shown under the /medias/username directory. Entries in the fstab file are best used for drives always attached as you will need additional parameters in fstab if a drive is not mounted.

Bazzite and Ubuntu Studio are very different but somewhat niche distros as Bazzite is for gaming and Studio is used for audio/video production, graphics design and photography so they are very different. What exactly are you going to be using the OS for is the question you need to answer.