I am thinking about switching to linux I wanted to ask you guys to share your experiences with houdini on linux.
Which distributions you use etc.

I found a tutorial on Gumroad “Linux Mint for VFX” [gumroad.com] which uses Linux Mint. A friend of mine uses CentOS. I also heard Ubuntu is quit solid.

Would really appreciate any information / opinion on which way to go.
Thanks!

We use CentOS at work, as I believe most studios do. I use Ubuntu at home. Haven't had any issue with either.

“It depends”

If you're using Houdini exclusively, then basically any modern Linux distro will work, as Side Effects are easily the best since Houdini works on almost every Linux I've ever tried.

Are you a technical person? If not, you may find OpenSUSE or Ubuntu easier to deal with setting things up. I recommend Kubuntu over Ubuntu since Ubuntu only has the Gnome desktop which is (personal opinion) crap.

If you use other software such as Maya, Substance Painter/Designer, then you should likely stick closer to an RPM based Linux distro, which means OpenSUSE, Centos 7 (or higher) and others. You can get Maya etc to work on non RPM based systems but you'll start to get technical and it can be frustrating if you prefer making images over running command line scripts

If you're on a Laptop I definitely recommend Kubuntu or Ubuntu, as it's the best I've found for laptops. It even supports the Intel/Nvidia hybrid cards. Again, if you're technical and don't mind spending a lot of time on tech setup, you might be able to get other distros to work on the laptop.

I'd say just as important as the distro is the graphics card. There is only one choice for Linux: Nvidia for better or worse. The drivers “just work” and with OpenSUSE and Kubuntu (and probably others) you just install them and away you go.

Hope that helps!
Cheers,

Peter B

Another vote for Kubuntu. I use it at home, windows 7 at work.

Xubuntu has been well behaved once set-up. Biggest hassle was setting up sshfs for an indie network… which is pretty tame.

Only serious problem is applications occasionally using up all the memory & forcing a hard-reset (same as Windows).
I wonder if Houdini (or PRISMS) was ever tested on QNX?