If everything goes as I programmed soon I’ll have some money to spend…
I was thinking about building a linux-based micro pc I’ll use only for rendering my blender models…
I think I’ll continue to build the models on my iMac G4 1GHz…
but I want to do all the renderings on a different pc…
The budget will be not the highest in History, neither the lowest…
what will you put in this small box if it’s for you?
I had very good results with this:
1 A motherboard for DUAL thlon (blender is not multiprocessor, but you can run 2 blender renderings in parallel!
2 1Gb of Ram
3 20Gb HD (that’s the smallest one at the time, now I guess you won’t even find
4 Floppy drive
5 ethernet card
No graphic card (built in on motherboard) No CD rom drive No monitor keyboard and mouse are superflous too, but you might need them because
some bios won’t start your PC without them.
You don’t need the CD driver because you can install Linux over the network (but you must be a linux guru) so you might need a CD
Once linux is up and running enable the telnet daemon and the NFS shares (or samba) and work on it via network
Stefano
How about one of these?
http://us.shuttle.com/specs2.asp?pro_id=284
Basically, you would want a lot of ram, 1Gig or so, plus a reasonable sized hard drive, 40 gig or so.
It would make a nice linux box!
–
Brian
I am also very interested in hearing what a good medium cost hardware setup for linux/blender would be.
1 A motherboard for DUAL thlon (blender is not multiprocessor, but you can run 2 blender renderings in parallel!
For a rendering system I agree with this. I am building my own almost-low-cost-linux workstation right now and it´ll be almost like S68 said:
Dual AMD 2600+
1GB Ram (still space left for up to 4GB - yes!)
but for 3D work a Geforce 4ti4200 128 MB
2x 120GB HD
for the motherboard i chose the MSI K7D Master-L which was quite cheap some weeks ago 166,00 EUR in germany. Network onboard and with USB2.0 card shipped.
another motherboard for Dual Athlons I first wanted to try was Tyan Tiger MP but the MSI K7 seems to have better performance as Tyan focuses mainly on serverbuilding, I think. Tyan has other (more expensive) MP boards worth looking at I think they´re called Tyan Tiger -series.
Best graphic cards for linux seem still to be Nvidia´s cards as their driver support is quite good (although the drivers are closed source ) compared to Ati.
A good point for investigating ready for linux hardware is suse´s hardwaredb : http://cdb.suse.de/?LANG=en_UK
another site I found interesting was http://www.linuxhardware.org
An interesting comparison (sadly in german only!) of 3 AMD Dual boards is at http://www.hardwareluxx.de/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=000006
also the whole page is quite interesting for investing Hardware related things as it has a huge section with reviews and tests with lots of links to english articles as well.
hope that could help. I can´t wait to see my station up and running!! If anyone interested in the specs when it´s done feel free to ask.
cheers
krizu
Just recently a geek friend of mine is starting to have Nvidia/linux conflicts but then he’s always installing the latest cutting edge kernal . It’s the moost recent that’s giving him trouble. He hasn’t been able to blend because of it. Any other options?
Just recently a geek friend of mine is starting to have Nvidia/linux conflicts but then he’s always installing the latest cutting edge kernal . It’s the moost recent that’s giving him trouble. He hasn’t been able to blend because of it. Any other options?
Hmm. same with funblender as with latest cutting edge kernels. It´s for testing purpose only - bugsquishing. Maybe your friend should talk to the linux kernel mailing list. I´ve been using Nvidia cards now from kernel 2.2.16 till 2.4.20 without problems. the latest stable version is 2.4.22 at the moment and that should go fine as well. I think most people doing 3d stuff under linux use Nvidia cards of any class because of the 3D acceleration. If you want to give it a try check out the Ati homepage, I heard they started developing own drivers for linux again - don´t know how well that´s going on.
BTW - as with hardware in general or with linux in special - the latest is thing is generally not the best choice!! bugs bugs bugs…
so if you want a system running for sure an Nvidia card I´d recommend Debian Woody patched with Sid to your needs…
cheers
krizu
He hasn’t been able to blend because of it. Any other options?
ahh I forgot this one: there is that mighty helpful lilo.conf option in the images area: “optional” make sure you gotta stable kernel in your pocket just in case you NEED to blend and your new cutting edge kernel causes trouble with your Nvida card! 
cheers
krizu
AH! Another Debian user. I must confess that I am in a rut with RH (although I have used Mandrake and also installed Debian once years ago). I’ve used rh since 5.3 and I would like to escape to Debian “some day”. As it is I am drowning in apps to learn and productivity issues 
So your happy with debian and blender? I’m on a 26800 baud rate connection to the net and I’m afraid apt get would just take forever. That’s why I am shy of taking the plunge into the steep learning curve of Debian.
With regard to Nvidia - I have heard it is very good but I tend to want to support those who support open source with open source even if it is not the best. (Just a gratitude thing)
AH! Another Debian user. I must confess that I am in a rut with RH because I am not that good at cli (although I have used Mandrake and also installed Debian once years ago). I’ve used rh since 5.3 and I would like to escape to Debian “some day”. As it is I am drowning in apps to learn and productivity issues So your happy with debian and blender? I’m on a 26800 baud rate connection to the net and I’m afraid apt get would just take forever. That’s why I am shy of taking the plunge into the steep learning curve of Debian.
With regard to Nvidia - I have heard it is very good but I tend to want to support those who support open source with open source even if it is not the best. (Just a gratitude thing)