Which Linux Flavor?

[dfuzion]

All you need is BLAG!
http://blagblagblag.org

[Francis Vega]

Ubuntu.
Maya, shake and nuke run soooo smooth

I like try CentOS.

[nathan]

New version of Ubuntu is coming out tomorrow. I just installed it tonight and haven't had any problems with the upgrade. I had to update a few plugins I use with Eclipse but thats about it. Nuke runs just fine under Gutsy and so does everything else I use day to day.

Fonts are a little weird atm I'm going to have to check this out a little more.

[Francis Vega]

downloading http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/7.10/

[DavidW]

I'm running Fedora Core 7 smoothly on my MacBook. Trippelbooting it nicely by the way: FC7, XP, OSX

[TookiTooki]

Currently I'm on XP. Let's say I want to switch a flavor of Linux to work with Nuke e.g. Nuke will run fine, but what about if you want to do some paint jobs? If I'm on XP, I just whip up Photoshop and start painting. But what if I'm on Linux, what are the alternatives there?

Sure. Switch to MacOS and you can run both side by side. That's also a possibility. but right now I'm interested in a linux workflow.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

Greetz!

[nathan]

Well Linux kinda blows in the Photoshop style applications department.

You have The GiMP but the name says it all if you know what I mean. Cinepaint is just about the same as The GiMP except it has 32bit support but none of the filters like The GiMP.The application that looks like it has promise is KDE's Krita.

If you have Photoshop CS or below you can get those to run pretty decently under Wine or Crossover Office. I ran Photoshop 7 pretty smoothly under Crossover Office for a few years myself without any real problems.

[TookiTooki]

So when you're more of a generalist in a small fx shop, one should/could stay with the more mainstream os like mac and xp. Where you can have a multitude of apps at your disposition in one box.

And when you're a compositor in a medium to large fx shop, you're sole purpose is to e.g. composite. Ergo, a workstation with linux and say Nuke, will fit your needs perfectly.

Right?

[nathan]

Sorta.

They each have pluses and minuses. Linux isn't exactly HORRIBLE for Photoshop style applications the only thing is you don't have something that is equal to a Photoshop on Linux is the point. Krita is pretty close if you ask me but how it will progress I'm not sure.

I've used nothing but Linux as my operating system the past 5 years. Oh you can bet I've slammed my head into a wall a time or two but I don't feel limited if you could say that. If Windows has more of the tool set you use then you would be better off sticking with that. Buying a Mac these days is almost the best solution if you are undecided what you wanna do. You triple boot the thing and you have the best of all worlds.

Funny thing is most of the time people don't switch because application X isn't available on Linux. While this is true you won't see me switching from linux because some of my favorite applications are NOT on Windows. So if I ever wanted to jump ship the role is reversed which I find kinda funny.

The amount of bs you can do to a Linux install is what I find most appealing. I have my scripts and bash files, folders and files with emblems and icons, and a whole ton of other stuff that I wouldn't wanna deal without if I were using anything else. Plus dev work and setting up a dev environment on Linux is just easier to deal with then I find on Windows. I install all the dev files through my software manager and simply code away. Windows you have to setup a bunch of stuff and sometimes compile the libraries to begin with which I just find a PITA.

[TookiTooki]

I had a Mac in my mind. This way I have a dual boot, so I can still use XSI on xp and After Effects, Photoshop, Shake on MacOSX.
I have worked with Linux before, so a triple boot seems a very interesting option.

Thanks for the insight! Very helpfull.

[mkolars]

For being serious as a fully fledged vfx and posthouse with a huge pipe, i can only recommend RH Enterprise 4, which gives plenty of options to hook up different OS, render clusters and facilitates advanced networking. For home users Ubuntu is just fine to play on a laptop or single workstation, but cannot be considered for professional use in a big company like us, where everything is customized and coded to flawlessly run everything smooth in the pipe with NAS, SAN, Renderfarm, Smoke, Flame, Inferno, Maya, Shake, PFTrack, Lustre, Arri Laser, Spirit 4K Scanner and a 50+ dual core dual bootable workstations, etc.

I like Ubuntu though, simple to use and install and a cool design, much better than RH4 but not for serious computing as i mentioned.

[nathan]

What exactly do you mean by not for serious computing? I'm curious have you run into problems of some kind?

Unlike your recommendation for RHE I don't hear it brought up much. Most often I hear Fedora, Cent "Although I suppose you could consider this a running copy of RHE", and Suse. I admit I don't hear Ubuntu much. I just don't hear of RHE much other then on Discreet systems.

I will admit you get the slight advantage of its always the main distro listed in system requirements but other then that I really haven't had problems with the Main 4 distros.

Ubuntu is debain based so it has the stability. RHE is RedHats version of Debian with Fedora being the Ubuntu of it. I just don't see nothing special about RHE such as you speak. You can customize and tweak any distro. RHE does tend to lag behind for the sake of stability but you can do that with other distros as well so I don't see what it has over anything else really. Sure you pay for support but lets face it if your running Linux in house you have more then just the average click Windows admin running your show so I'm sure they can handle things.

To each his own though

[mkolars]

In our company we run everything with RH Enterprise, privat i use Ubuntu 7.10 on XP dual boot and love it, easy to configure, fast and rock solid....i run Shake 4.1 on it and its smooth like butter....flawless and blazingly fast....

cheers,
Mark

PS: Oh, NGRY saw my own post above, didn't know that i already responded to this thread, as you can see i have changed my mind, now i found out that Ubuntu is cool for my needs, i guess all (my) the different opinions were spit out too fast, sorry for the that !!

[brogh]

Fedora ! over and over and over again

I love this distro, simple and stable [ I've cheked also the others to compare suse,slack,debian,Bubuntu (hehe) ]

Cheers guys

[jemi]

Mmmmm. I love Arch!