I am wondering if I should us windows or linux for grapics/blender
Well I think by my sn you can tell which I would suggest.
My question though is do you already know Linux or would you have to learn it? If you already are familiar with Linux I would say definitely go with Linux. There is a lot of tools in Linux for graphics/blender. And if you are a coder of any sort you can write some shell scripts for backups and other functions. The biggest thing I worry about when using Windows (I dual boot) is getting a virus and having work get lost because of it. However being more computer literate and more informed about viruses I can not remember the last time I’ve gotten one that gave me any sort of issues. If you stay on top of virus scanning and whatnot you shouldn’t have an issue on it. If you don’t know Linux you can still use Windows for graphics and blender and try learning Linux on the side.
Either choice you make good luck and happy blending.
If you don’t have a reason of your own to use GNU/Linux, you might as well use Windows. If you like Linux, go for it! Personally, I like Unix, but I also usually use Windows. Its up to you.
Im going with linux but what version do you recomend
billy,
i agree with egan. Especially if you have a solid install of XP Pro and a way to back up partitions with software like “Drive Image” or something like that.
The other thing to think about is your existing software you have invested in such as Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) and maybe a graphics tablet?
Each OS has advantages but they are more or less a personal preference and not worth talking about.
Graphicall.org is maybe a good place to start! Take note of the builds there and what is available for Windows compared to Linux. As you can see, Windows builds are frequent and therefore you’ll always have the latest features available - should you crave them?
Render engines such as Indigo are MUCH easier to install on Windows than on Linux and one of my reasons for dual booting is just that.
As long as your hardware is supported on Linux (as it is on Windows) you should be OK to try it because a bootable CD/DVD image is all you need to take it for a spin and see for yourself.
As you “sig” sais: Everything is possible
My favorite Linux distro for graphics design is Paldo because it offers current cutting edge packages but over at distrowatch.org you can get a better impression of what’s available and popular in Linux land.
Hope you have access to a fast internet connection
If you are already happy about you operating system, there is no need to change.
Should you want to find a new one though, then it really depends on your needs.
Here is a couple i would consider:
http://www.opensuse.org/en/ and http://www.ubuntu.com/
Two “standard” distributions. Both designed for normal
users, but pulls it off in different ways.
And this one looks interesting:
http://www.animux.org/ - I don’t know if this is good, cause
it hasn’t been released yet :D, anyways, its an operating system,
designed for animation. Blender is included from the installation.
But there are 336 of them. I could be any one of them that fits your
needs perfectly. Therefore, i would recommend you to check this list:
http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity
You can click on a name to read more about the OS.
I would look into the first 30, though its alot of choice of course
Well, it works great on Windows XP if you’re already using that OS.
Windows ? Why ? Maybe you plan to chat with your friend and find that your new camera is not supported in Linux.
And if time to time you wanna see the games made by the industry…you will need Windows.
not really, a lot of win apps work on linux thanks to WINE. Aaw man don’t tell me u don’t know! I have Ubuntu, everyone loves it, i think it’s cool, but all software outdated. I gotta learn to compile from svn.
Compileing from SVN:
- Sudo apt-get install <required packages>
- cd <directory it is in>
- make
- sudo make install
that simple for most programs
also, on Ubuntu, you can look at getdeb.org for recent packages
Didn’t want to start a new thread, because I have essentially the same question.
I’m considering building a dedicated self contained render farm for Blender3D based on Helmer. It will have atleast 24 cores for rendering, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 48GB of ram.
I know that I’ll probably have to use a version of linux to make it run correctly, but I am a windows user for the most part, and I do very well with that OS. I’d be changing out of necessity, but I need to know which version of linux would give me what I need functionally for the render server, and be the most like windows in it’s look and feel, so I won’t have to get used to a different OS.
I just want the easiest learning curve, is all.
I’d also like the facts on why blender seems to run better on linux.
Thanks
I found that Blender renders a TAD bit faster on Linux, but I would not use the word “better” for the overall experience. Often Windows graphics drivers are better than Linux on the same exact machine. There is much more difference in rendering speed between 32 bit Windows and 64 bit Windows. The 64 bit Windows was faster on my hardware.
However, I use Windows because Blender is not the only application I use. Linux falls WAAAYYY short when it comes to working with audio. There is no equivalent of Sonar/ProTools, or Ableton on Linux. Yes there are little mickey mouse kinds of audio manipulators, but no real “professional” audio editing apps. As soon as I see this barrier removed, I will certainly use Linux more and more. At this time, Linux is more of a novelty and I try out builds as they are released.
I also find Linux driver issues are more severe than Windows. For Windows, I can download an installer and it actually installs the driver and it works! If Ido the same thing on linux all I get is a package and I am expected to know the console gobly gook to type in to make it all work. This, often, leaves me high and dry with a partial build and some hardware disabled. Linux will never be more popular than Windows until that issue is solved. And just to make it clear, Linux will never be more popular than Windows until installers actually work by clicking on them. I want the Mac experience out of Linux. and by that I mean “just do it” don’t ask me or tell me how it all works. If Linux can get that to work, it will take over the world (even more).
IF you choose linux be sure to remember that when opening blender it goes to fullscreen so in the command box you must go blender -w for window mode. The in order to have the most recent distrubution you are better off installing it yourself because linux’s repositories may not have the newest ones but don’t worry they come already configured.
Rendering may be marginal but Open GL performance on linux is literally double what I get in windows. This is especially important now we use all these fancy GLSL shaders etc…
On a large environment I was working on earlier in the year for a games project, just navigating the view was painful on XP, yet I was flying on a lesser spec laptop running ubuntu… do any serious profile on a dual boot system and you’ll see what I mean…
As for the Audio, I only dabble but have found ubuntu studio great, though you need a different mindset than for audio on windows…
A pro sound engineer i used to work with at criterion (he’s at “splash damage” now) would only ever use ARDOUR on linux for audio…
I know this is an old thread, but for open source, Linux is the better choice.
Gimp is much nicer on linux somehow, and though blender is “identical” the respnsiveness is very noticable on lager scenes…
IF you want to play games or have a bunch of closed source apps that don’t run under wine then I guess you’ll want to stick with windows, though that list grows smaller and smaller…
Why not Linux and then just use Virtualbox for running Windows?
Although I personally like linux (Ubuntu) better than Windows, and find that I have better performance in Ubuntu, I agree that for some things you do need Windows.
I have had some drivers issues with some of the hardware I use (aiptek tablet, intel integrated graphics, tascam us-122) and so to record music, I need to boot into Windows. Also, I find that Open Office Impress is nowhere near as good as Microsoft Powerpoint (even though Writer = Word and Spreadsheet = Excel). The end result is that I spend 90% of my time in Ubuntu and boot into Windows every once in a while for a specific task. I keep Windows hibernating, so It really doesn’t take very long.
All virtual machines are slow. Anyway why do I need a virtual box when I can dual boot into a "real OS?
Seamlessly switching between OS’s for one, without having to reboot, also copy-and-paste. I use Virtualbox on my Mac to run Windows XP, it’s not slow at all.
I have tried Linux Ubuntu 8.10 but as they update the kernel my radeon 8800 GS doesn’t work for 3d (Blender doesn’t work anymore) and I need to clean it and recompile the newest driver to get blender working again.
I don’t like it!!!
The upside of using Linux(Ubuntu in my case) over windows for Blender is that getting the latest svn build for Linux is just an svn update/scons away. I’ve tried almost every branch of blender in svn because its so easy to checkout and build in Linux. I went through so many headaches trying to get the same experience in OSX, and I still didn’t get the thing built. On windows is bit easier but you have to download the dependencies, something that in Ubuntu is basically just one command “apt-get build-dep blender” and that installs all of the necessary headers and libs for blender, after that building blender is smooth as silk.
I 've also noticed far less issues in Blender than on other platforms (especially OSX), and while I used to notice that Blender ran much quicker in Windows than Linux, that is certainly not the case anymore. There are issues though, compiz and Blender don’t get along all that well (not Blender’s fault) and I still think windows renders a bit faster (though that may be because I’m not optimizing my builds correctly).
As for the platform itself, if you plan to implement something like a render farm, Linux is the way to go. Not only is it cost effective but it also makes life easier (once you know what your are doing) in the long run. Why else would effects houses like ILM and Pixar use Linux on their farms. My suggestion is if you are new to Linux go with Ubuntu, not because its easy to use but because the community is HUGE and you are more likely to find an answer to most issue you are having in the forums than with other Linux communities. In-fact you are most likely to hit the ubuntuforums as the first result if you google for a linux issue. The community is generally friendly and they seem to welcome newbs on the forum , which let me tell you is not common in most Linux forums where they can get downright nasty. On the other hand if you need stability and better server administration tools go with CentOS, its based off (actually it is, minus the branding) RedHat’ enterprise offering. Its a heavily used distro in server spaces and renderfarms due to its robust server admin tools.
I don’t suggest you go with Fedora, this is not a bias but based off of experience. I’ve used that distro since before the name change, when it was still just Redhat 9, then Fedora Core 1 (which was basically RH9 with some updated packages and branding changes). While the distro has definitely come a long way from its early days its still way too bleeding edge and unstable, imo. I’ve had major issues with that distro since day one. While I definitely respect what thay have done in recent releases and recommend it if you are just fooling around or want the latest cutting edge stuff, its not something I would use on a production machine. If it weren’t for the community and ease of use I wouldn’t recommend Ubuntu either, as it also has issues with stability sometimes.