Audacity is returning to the official repositories of some Linux distributions

Audacity 3.1.3 on Fedora 37

A few hours ago we wrote an article in which we echoed the launch of the latest version of Audacity, v3.2.0 to be more exact. What is surprising is that the news begins with a notification from Pamac saying that there is a new version, but due to a bug or a strange “feature”, the new versions usually appear with the same numbering as the existing one. To check things out, one goes to their software store, searches for “audacity” and sees that there is an option for “Official (community) repositories” numbered 3.1.3. But hadn't they stopped at 2.x for telemetry?

Yes, it was, but it seems that things are changing. This afternoon I decided to check how all this was in different distributions, and I can confirm that Debian (11) still has Audacity 2.4.2 in its repositories, that Ubuntu 22.04 is in it and 22.10 doesn't even have the software included (it seems to have been removed), but Manjaro, in the community repository (the official one, not AUR), EndeavorOS and Fedora, both current 36 and beta 37, do include it in their repositories, although moment offer v3.1.3. Manjaro and EndeavourOS are both based on Arch Linux, and here there is the "parent" system package.

Non-telemetry would have encouraged different projects to reinstate Audacity

It is commented that this is related to telemetry. And it is that Audacity, although it now has a new owner, has always been open source. The problem was more that Muse Group collected usage data of the software, and the different projects said “so far”, and they kept v2.4.2 frozen in their repositories for a long time. It even seems that Canonical will remove the package in Ubuntu 22.10, but everything could change if the new (or not so new, because rumors circulate for more than a year) philosophy.

Based on this information, Audacity would now have the telemetry disabled by default, and it should be activated manually if we want to share our usage data. Basically this is how these things should be: we should be consulted, and if said query is accompanied by an option with a checkbox or verification box, it must be unchecked. The exodus of users to other alternatives could have had a lot to do with this decision, but for whatever reason, at least Fedora and the Arch-based distributions have reinstated Audacity.

For those of us who prefer to use updated software, this is good news. Isolated packages (sandbox) such as flatpak or snap do not integrate as perfectly well as the specific packages of each distribution. Without going any further, one of the new options, such as sharing, does not appear in the Flatpak version, not to mention how bad it is to use the dark theme if there are parts that are still light. If all this is as it seems, it is likely that Audacity will soon return to Debian and other based systems as well.

Audacity 3.2.0 in an Ubuntu 22.10 virtual machine

Audacity 3.2.0 in an Ubuntu 22.10 virtual machine

UPDATED: Ubuntu 22.10 also has it available in its official repositories. From the looks of it, Audacity is back.


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