I have Linux Slackware and Fedora Core 3, and I don't know wich one to install for running Houdini!
Can you please give me some tips!

Thanks!

I suspect both will work, but you'll likely get less grief with Fedora. Most issues revolve around graphics drivers - if you're using NVidia you're more likely to have things run smoothly(be sure to get the Linux detonator drivers from NVidia).

Cheers,

J.C.

Thanks! What do you think about SuSe, or, what would you choose, because, Houdini with Linux is a first for me!

ubuntu setup ATI vid drivers and openGL automatically during install which was impressive, houdini runs fine too.

You're asking the wrong guy - I'm rather prejudiced toward SUSE. It's got, by far, the best install and configuration tools of any Linux distro, IMHO. If you just want to install and use, it's the way to go. Plus, support for multimedia is best, bar none. Almost everything you can get in Linux world, you get with SUSE. You can get anything with other distros, but it's obviously more manual.

The downside? It's not free. I think around $90US last time I checked. Cheap, but not free. It comes with masses of data, though - two *double layer* DVDs and 5 CD's, something like that, plus full 32/64 bit support. the admin manual is so good, you could charge $50 for it in a bookstore and get away with it. It's not just a “here's how to add users” sort of manual, it really gets into the nitty gritty with tons of rather rare and useful information for tech-heads, should you want it.

Fedora is fine, though. Still has a number of annoying aspects to it that particularly bug me, but it's a great free solution.

Cheers,

J.C.

hey JC,

i know you can pay for SUSE, but i'm pretty sure it is offered for free as well.. of course you don't get the certain perks of purchasing it (tech support, manuals, pressed dvds, etc).. but yea, it's definitely there and offered. right now 9.3 is currently only for paying users, but 9.2 is on their ftp servers and all the mirrors… i'm hoping in the next couple weeks 9.3 will be released, because i was extremely impressed with SUSE after demo-ing the live dvd..

http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/downloads/suse_linux/index.html [novell.com]

I've never been clear on the “free” versions - I think the “download” version might be that, but I was pretty sure there's still something not all there. I might be wrong. I think you need to download each package you want as you want it. I'm also unsure if it allows updates, and you *want* updates. They come out with patches regularly, and given they run quite recent kernels and very new software, you'll want it.

9.3 is out, as you say, we got our cut a few weeks ago, and I guess that's how it works - latest and greatest costs money and you'll get media. Actually, while 9.2 was fine, 9.3 is working out better for me, mostly because I'm running relatively bleeding edge hardware and I need the new kernel. There's seems to be more kewl stuff in 9.3 over 9.2 - they have the RC for OO2, which is sweet, and once the final release comes out they'll make it available as a patch update.

Cheers,

J.C.

yea.. i was kind of wondering about the updates.. they're a little vague about all that.. but they seem to be that way even on the enterprise versus professional edition.. according to their comparitive guide, even the pro version comes with very little updates. it's odd. i'm still gonna try it out once 9.3 goes public.. but it will definitely be on a clean formatted drive just in case it doesn't work out and i need to reformat..

I could use some help with that actually.. anybody out there running windows and linux together but having them boot off different drives? Basically i want to append SUSE or some other distro to my windows box, but i don't want to repartition and add it to my current windows drive. It'd be really nice if i could have it sitting on another drive by itself.. But i don't know much about this when it comes to booting.. Would i need to go in to the BIOS each time and change which device to boot from? How does all this work? (sorry, i'm a linux newbie and am trying to convert).

Any help or resources you guys know of would be great..

Thanks,
Dave

We run Enterprise here on one of our servers and you definitely need a paid account to get updates for that, no question. It's a lot more pricey - $300 or so - but it's real enterprise stuff. Just sits there and works. Handles up to 5 billion users(!!!), it's running 64bit, and can address unthinkable numbers of terabytes.

Most dual boot scenarios I've come across require you to boot from the same drive - but I know it's do-able. I've found that installing XP first is best(since it doesn't play well with others ), then let a savvy Linux install, like SUSE, manage it. I'm hesitant to suggest a method for your dual-disk approach. SUSE install is normally very sensitive to existing XP installs and will work around it, giving you options to boot into at start time, RH I know can cause problems sometimes unless you're careful. The two disk thing - sounds like it's either a doodle when you install, or it's an advanced topic - not sure. Googling got me this:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/index.php/t-2160.html [forums.fedoraforum.org]

Looks like Fedora 2 anyways, it's a tech exercise. Installing SUSE with a dual boot on the same drive is trivial, and works well. Still have to be very careful, though, you have the power to delete your windows install. Always remember if you muss up the MBR you can always get back to windows controlling things using FIXMBR.EXE.

Maybe someone else has tried it and can chime in…

Cheers,

J.C.

Thanks for your replys! I've choosed SuSE, 9.0, not the latest but it works fine! I had no problems installing NVidia drivers or Houdini, so I like it !

Thanks again!

Now that everyone has made their choices and forgotten about this thread I'll add my two cents.

I've always been a big Slackware fan. No bloat and if you need to do admin type of stuff you have to learn the old school way to do it as there aren't many GUI utils. That said….its really nice way to learn linux if you got spare time.

On the Houdini side of things, I ran Houdini on slack without any problems. (I think I had to adjust the way the license server was installed since Slackware has a BSD style start up script system.)

However after starting to use SuSE at work, I've actually found I quite like it. And since I don't have the time to learn (fight) with Slackware I think SuSE will be a really nice alternative.

Installing SUSE with a dual boot on the same drive is trivial, and works well.

Well, that's good to hear.. I may just end up letting SUSE take care of it and put it beside windows and just make a system backup before I do.. That link was really helpful though and I found a few others about putting grub on the MBR with another distro on a seperate drive.. So I am kinda interested in trying it out. We'll see how much time I have and want to put in to it later on. Thanks J.C.


Also, thanks Wolfwood for the info.. Like I said earlier, I'm relatively new to Linux and my whole point of doing all this is to become familiar with it so I have that knowledge for the future. I'm already comfortable getting around a shell and what not, but I want to dive in deep with some bash scripting and then possibly move on to some perl or python when I get the time later this summer.. I've just avioded it for way too long and I know it's time for me to sit down and finally learn it. I don't want to get cornered in to being a full time programmer by any means, but I figured it's probably a good asset to have when it comes time for me to move in to higher productions.


As always, any thoughts/suggestions anyone might have for me are always welcomed.


Thanks all,
Dave

Hi.

I run Houdini on Slackware with no problems and comparing this ver to windows version is muuuuch more stable.

I also plan to install it on BSD but currently don't know is that possible.

Greetz

I'm running Houdini on a dell laptop with gentoo linux installed (2.6 kernel). It's great. The nvidia drivers all work fine, at 1920x1200.

www.gentoo.org

The thing I like about gentoo is the “emerge sync” command which will safely update/compile all your sources, and it does “deep dependency” checking, so that you don't get stuck in dependency-hell (ie. get stuck with missing or incompatible libraries which you didn't realise were needed until it was too late…). We ran slackware at vislab, and that was cool, but as wolfwood says it's very “old skool”, and requires a fair bit of unix experience.

The trouble with the various linux distributions is you'll find zealous opinions about each of them. If I wasn't running Gentoo, then I'd consider Debian, and then perhaps SUSE.

I'm bored with the constant maintenance required to keep a linux machine running: gentoo lets me avoid all that.

cheers,
ben.

PS. The “update” command I run, perhaps once a week, is:

#!/bin/bash
#
# update everything, as per gentoo forum
# http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=1060314#1060314 [forums.gentoo.org]
#
emerge sync
emerge -uDav world
emerge -av depclean
## revdep-rebuild -pv
revdep-rebuild -v
dispatch-conf

Gentoo rocks. It has the best portage system, the fine documentation, it is very simple in administration. Two most of all angered me things in rpm-based distros was necessity of search the required package and constant problems with dependencies.
In Gentoo I am not obliged to know, on what server there is a package necessary for me and what dependences it is necessary to satisfy for its installation. I simply do something like this
#emerge nvidia-kernel
#emerge nvidia-glx
#emerge nvidia-settings
…
#emerge houdini

In result I have the system and packages optimized for my hardware.
I never considered, that this or that distribution kit more multimedia, than another. And Gentoo very easy becomes for “most multimedia” after something like
#emerge mplayer
#emerge amarok
…

Hello,
Now I'm using SuSE 9.3 and I like it, it is easy to install and even configure. I've heared the same things about Gentoo, but I got SuSE first so…

Thanks for your reply!

Hi,

I'm also on suse 9.3 and I'm happy with it.
I don't know about other distributions but suse is easy to handle for a beginer.
It has great administration tools, perhaps more clear than windows.
Everything is fluent (ok…everything but booting) and houdini just rocks.
Only pain is lack of some drivers and no editing tools.
By the way, do you have any experience with crossover office? I;d like to run photoshop on linux, is it worth it?

Peter