> > > Couple of other things to. Red Hat is generally better giving support.
>
> > > You might even want to consider talking to Red Hat about this. Since
> they
> > > are the only ones that support (with a commercial OS release anyway)
> the
> > > SPARCLinux and Linux/Alpha ports, they might consider offering it to
> > > customers and corps as an semi-alternative to say SGI workstations.
> > > POVRay, The GIMP, MicroStation (assuming they or you can convince the
> It is, but right now it's only on Linux as a student version, not a full
> commercail product last time I checked.
> > <little note, decs not selling graphics boxen less than 533 now, they
> > match sgis octane quite well for being roughly 1/5th the price. these new
> > ones are cheaper than the old 500s, at least in hollywood, and use much
> > faster ram>
> >
> > > one million dollar SGI graphics workstation. Even SGI realizes not
> > > everyone can pay that much for a graphics workstation. A Linux
> graphics
> >
> > thats why they have plans to start making NT machines for the "low end"
> > (what the O2 was originally aimed at)
>
> Yeah, but still $5000 is pretty steap. And besides, everyone is looking at
> SGI Unix based systems running the pretty graphics. If SGI or DEC were to
> come out with a graphics workstation based on the P2 or even their own
> chips (Linux is on MIPS and Alpha, lets not forget that) with Linux and
> ports of other high end graphics programs they could be digging into a
> market that even Hollywood is looking at, the small budget movies. A small
> budget movie graphics house could produce with SGI quality graphics apps JP
> graphics on Linux boxes for a lot cheaper, while larger movie studios can
> stick with the million dollar SGI workstations they already have.
$5k is not steep for what these effects houses do with thier hardware,
what is funny is that the only effects houses and other such companies
that use linux are the ones who can afford the custom programming, like
digital domain, silicon grail (maybe they did not want sgi to know that),
R&H probably has a little too. but even if they ran linux, graphics boxes
would still easily cost more than that. $5k is about about as cheap as you
can get for a DEC. for render time, alphas give better price/performance
than intel. there are plently of wintel boxes being sold at around $10k,
and they usually have much more RAM and hard disk space the the similarly
priced O2 (suppposedly better graphics performance, but ive never tired it
and dont really believe in benchmarks)
> > > package might be able to compete with it. The Amiga has already proven
> > > that high end graphics aren't the domain of high end workstations
> anymore
> > > with the early work on B5 done all Amiga. Linux _might_ be able to tap
> > > that market as well.
i thought amigas were really expensive.
> > Linux still lacks the acceptance to gain developers capable of making
> > it a viable alternative to SGI. thier market is in 3d. as long as they
> > have the apps and the hardware acceleration, were still going to boot to
> > NT for work. the gimp is good enough when im not doing print work to
> > replace photshop unless i need paths. povray does not compare to high end
> > packages for animation (character animation can be done in povray, i had
> a
> > friend who almost tore out all his brain cells doing it, and it did work,
> > but it takes me hours to do with lightwave what it takes him weeks to do
> > in povray)
>
> I know, that's why I want to at least prove that a Linux based system can
> compete with a more expensive NT based system and still get the job done
> just as good, if not better. BTW, try the Blue Moon Rendering Tools. They
ive been meaning too.
> are complient with what Pixar uses... hhmm, heres an idea. Steve Jobs runs
> Pixar _AND_ Apple; Apple is porting, with the help of the OSF, Linux to
> PowerMacs; many Pixar employees use Linux at home, lets see if we can get
> Pixar to port a few of their pro rendering tools to Linux and test it out?
> You never know, just might convince a lot of people that it can be done.
and he would probably rather this stuff go to rapshody. do they really any
more compitition, or another OS making thiers look bad?
without hardware
acceleration, i do get alightly better performance under linux than NT
with a pentium pro, and sometimes certain images will render
faster(barely) in NT, but i still get better interactive speed in linux.
for example, photshop3 could not pan across an image nearly as well as the
gimp could. phostoshop4 could, if teh window was not covered. but i dont
think they did anything special in the gimp for this performance increase.
ive heard the difference is more pronounced on an alpha. has anyone here
tried?
> I'd love to see this. I'd love to see it done. Maybe we could try to
> convince them to at least give it a shot. You never know. Sicker things
> have happened.
SGI is a really big comapny with alot riding on them. sick things tend to
happen with little companies. Linux still has no corporate entity to back
them up, the kernel is volatile(its development), and bill has everyone
scared into windows(the worst part) While its proven that commercial can
be ported or developed (most of us have netscape if nothing else)
> > the other complaint SGI had was that they were hard to use, but i never
> > found that to be true.
>
> What is hard to use?
i dont know. i never found them hard to use. I would like to be able to
change the window manager just for fun...
> One of these days I gotta learn C or something. I have too many ideas and
> not enough skill to program.
go for it! (be patient) and you may want to try starting with c++. theres
alot of argument both ways, but that worked for me. I rarely use the ++
but its great when you do want to.
one thing im thinking of doing, is getting an NT box and
running exceed3d(xserver with hardware GL acceleration) to the linux box
so i can use both at the same time. the idea here is to get both on the
same desktop and to get acceleration for linux GL programs. the NT is also
for programs that dont run on linux. NFS and/or samba may also be used.
any thoughts on this?
I already concidered sgi, the software is too
expensive. (but i will admit i really like using alias) they are much more
comfortable to use, and i would not have to put up with windows. I owuld
not use NT if it wasnt for the software thing.
which brings another problem. software companies like to charge more for
unix versions, and would probably do the same for linux.
also, has anyone else here played with moonlight creator?
http://home.worldnet.fr/~rehel/ml/ml.html
> jason murdock
>
decayed kisses,
The Pixel Fairy
http://www.pitzer.edu/~zkazi
