I think these links offer a lot of information very relevant to this discussion:
http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/ [kernelthread.com]
http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/conclusion.html [kernelthread.com]

@wren: here you have a demo of desktop management workflow on a mac :
http://blog.medallia.com/2006/05/smacbook_pro.html [blog.medallia.com]

Dragoş

The part with “psychological trap” is SO true!!!
I'm not proud of that but I'm back on windows for that reason, more time spent on getting things work and learning how to do it then on actual job.
Linux works better when there is an administrator to take care of everything.

peliosis
The part with “psychological trap” is SO true!!!
I'm not proud of that but I'm back on windows for that reason, more time spent on getting things work and learning how to do it then on actual job.
Linux works better when there is an administrator to take care of everything.

You only need to spen more time to use a new tool like Linux, if all of us only use any tool (Linux,MACOs, Houdini, Maya, etc …) because we know it and we don't want to know anymore the would be impossible to know new things.
I know that for many of us is very difficult to spent time testing new trhings, but, at least for me, I have seen that if I knoe that the new tool is probed to be better, the time spent learning it is time I save in the future, this has been my experienced with both Linux and Houdini.

The problem is that I am not interested in the operating system itself. I want to spend time learning Houdini, not the operating system, which I consider a “support” for the applications I need. In that respect, the OS should be fast, easy to use, powerful and as less intrusive (read: headache) as possible. I think OS X satisfies more of those requirements than Linux (for me, at least).

if I knoe that the new tool is probed to be better

Unfotunately I don't think someone can really prove you that Linux is better than OS X (or viceversa). For me, for example, is “proven” that OS X is better than Linux, and not because of technological reasons in the first place but because of efficiency and user-experiece. You criteria and/or experience might be completely different. The same can be said about Houdini vs Maya.

lisux
You only need to spen more time to use a new tool like Linux, if all of us only use any tool (Linux,MACOs, Houdini, Maya, etc …) because we know it and we don't want to know anymore the would be impossible to know new things.
I know that for many of us is very difficult to spent time testing new trhings, but, at least for me, I have seen that if I knoe that the new tool is probed to be better, the time spent learning it is time I save in the future, this has been my experienced with both Linux and Houdini.

Don't get me wrong, I'm constantly and stubbornly learning houdini along with all goods it provides, and things which are worth time spent on learning eg scripting.
But with linux there is a completely different story because being a 3d animator you just don't have to know how to fix all of them little errors.
The knowledge you gain over certain level is only a time loss because “oh in the next version they'll change it” and the fact that you are so proud of yourself because you found that after uninstalling package “x” because it did not cooperate with current version of whatever and adding a file here and there your cd rom works all right, is just a plain misunderstanding.

I was a very happy linux user for over a year, after long fights I succeeded in many things and houdini was working like a charm (I used suse so I had to create a simple script for it to set the variables and run some services). But a lot of things were just not working properly, wifi once starting once not (yes I checked with all ifconfig iwconfig rcnetwork status rcnetwork restart route and all of them), external harddrives did the same, mp3 players and digital cameras did what thye wanted, network went dead after installing 10.1, problems with raid because of something, filesystem madness between windows and linux (I know about about ex2ifs and that something for ntfs but hey can you say “corrupt data” ).

After all I came to an assumption that either I'll uninstall this shit and start working or all that I'll become will be a medium skilled home network administrator.

Most of these linux problems empowers you with redundant knowledge.

Now I'm back to windows and curse on memory problems with houdini, but that's houdini problem

At the end you use the OS or app which is better for you or your company.
And why is better for you is your personal decission.
The idea I want to say with my previous email is that for me at the end using linux is better than windows or Mac OSX (I haven't use the last MAcOSX version).
I have suffered many of the problems that other users. almost the 90%percent of the problems are hardware related, but I am warning about these problems and before to buy hardware I can check in many websites around the internet if this hardware is compatible witrh linux and how to install it.
Yes hardware is a problem because the industry only support windows and a Mac.
But If I have to count all the windows systems I have had to reinstall, because in windows is almost impossible to fix any problem, all the windows systems suffered a serius degradation after 3 or 4 months of use, all the systems crashed after a softeare installation the poor memory and networking performance, etc …. And I have to pay for this stuff ?
Sorry, I prefer to install Ubuntu in 15 minutes, spent 2 hours in setting all and have a reliable distribution.
But this is only my opinion and my experience after 3 years of developer/animator.
About Mac OSX, the previous version I have tested wasn't so good in memory and networking, I am sure that the last one has been improved in these areas.
Mac is by far the best integrated OS at the moment, Ubuntu is very closo, but Mac wins in this area.
For me the problem is that I don't like all the layers of interface that MacOSX force you to use, and I don't like that in Mac you are forced to use his own workflow. in linux I can adapt any systems to my way of doing things, in Mac I have to work in the Mac way of doing things, in some cases is good, for example for a paint program, but, for me, for an animation program is not the best ui and workflow.
And I don't want to be so technical, but there are other technical aspects taht I don't like about Macs.
And again, of course, I admit that is the best integrated in terms of software and hardware.

I tried to read all posts… but it is a heavy discussion.
As my personal point of view… I think It would have been nice to be able to run Houdini on OSX…

I'm a Maya user on OS X and I'm very satisfied with modeling, animation and texturing with that combo. I think a lot of OS X users are in this boat. While I think it would be cool for SE to port Houdini to OS X I would be lying if I said I'd be willing to give up my Maya seats. While I think there's a good chance that the DCC community using OS X would grow as a result of Houdini being ported. However, if Sfx was counting on that success happening immediately an OS X port wouldn't be practical. Prior to OS X and Maya a lot of 3D software developers had justifiable concerns about developing for Apple, but now there are more robust 3D apps available than not on OS X so Houdini has a lot of good features, but still would be facing an uphill battle for getting into the race late.

Good.


Just wanted to say that I am here and still waiting for the OSX version of Houdini…

Yip So am I, so am I!

It seems to me that the answer is with the studios big and small.

If that is you then please write to SE and tell them you are wanting a software port so they can see that it's worth doing it!

Thanks, Slave1

One vote for Houdini on OS X!

I just tested Modo 201 on my MacBook Pro and it's pretty sweet for what it is. Too bad my favorite Houdini won't run…

The race is getting tighter! Side FX should act!

Cheers,
/Max

On cnet I recently found an article which sounds interesting: They describe Parallels Workstation, a virtualization solution for intel-based macs. With this software you don't have to reboot into another OS like with Apple's Bootcamp and you don't have such big performance drawbacks like in VirtualPC (if I remember correctly VPC emulates a Pentium2 with S3-graphics with no real opengl). It runs applications from other OSes alongside Mac OS X. I have no idea what that means for the interface and GUI. However, it seems a promising option with the mac intel-desktops hopefully coming soon.

I put my thoughts on this topic on newsvine.com and started a poll regarding Houdini on Macs:
http://walterra.newsvine.com/_news/2006/07/19/292817-sidefxs-houdini-on-a-mac [walterra.newsvine.com]

You can install vmware on a linux machine and then run OSX and windows in it. If you have a dual monitor setup for instance, once screen is vmware, the other linux. Why linux? Well to be sure that whenever vmware crashes becuase OSX or Windows crashes your computer keeps running…minimal downtime.

MS is talking with Xen to modify Windows so it can run from within Xen. Xen is better than Vmware performance wise. I'll doubt Jobs will do the same with OSX despite the fact that OSX is just an improved graphic shell on top of freeBSD. Hmmm maybe Sidefx would be so kind as to make a BSD version of houdini. Ubuntu and Fedora Core are very stable linux distros without headaches.
There always is a problem with proprietary(?) hardware drivers. Some vendors don't supply drivers at all, some release buggy drivers (ATI), some have good linux support(NVidia). All the latest distro's have wifi support and what i heard it works very well.

Investing some time in learning your OS pays off in the end…99% of the problems with computers is software (OS) related. But maybe the learning curve of linux is like the learning curve of houdini, steep…but very rewarding imho.

walterra
…they describe Parallels Workstation, a virtualization solution for intel-based macs. With this software you don't have to reboot into another OS like with Apple's Bootcamp and you don't have such big performance drawbacks like in VirtualPC (if I remember correctly VPC emulates a Pentium2 with S3-graphics with no real opengl).

Not positive… but I believe
Parallels on a Mac will run any Linux or Windows app almost at native speeds using the Intel chips virtualization functionality…

BUT… I believe Parallels can't take advantage of a hardware accelerated OpenGL card, so if the app depends heavily on hardware acceleration for OpenGL, then you are hosed… and it won't perform.

If anyone knows differently I would like to hear…

jcoyle

Pagefan
Investing some time in learning your OS pays off in the end…99% of the problems with computers is software (OS) related. But maybe the learning curve of linux is like the learning curve of houdini, steep…but very rewarding imho.

Complitely agree :!:

There is a review on The Register where bootcamp is compared to parallel

http//www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/08/02/review_bootcamp_parallels_desktop/

I would like to see an OS X version.

I stopped having private desktop machines years ago because I spend too much time in front of a computer anyway during working hours. I had laptops now for at least 6-7 years and all of them had some sort of Linux system on it, but most of them were dual boot because I just love playing with a lot of renderers (and there are a lot).

Reallisticly there are not too many renderers which are really production ready for film work but PRMan (and RenderMan compliant renderers like AIR and 3Delight), mental ray, and Mantra I needed always on my laptop. Others (like Radiance, Maxwell, etc.) are nice to have and play around with (and learn from) it but over the years I had less and less time to do that in my spare time.

At The Mill I had a really nice setup (thanks to Dave Levy) where I had all the development tools (for Houdini, XSI, and Maya) synced on the laptop. So when I left the company I synced into one direction (to the laptop) and went home. If I changed stuff on there I synced the other direction (to the desktop machine) the next day and some softlinks made the transition between NFS (work) and local disk space seamless. I nearly convinced them (The Mill) to let me work from home (which in my opinion is Berlin, not London) and for a while I was allowed to do that (once every 4 to 6 weeks). That's where a nice setup and a laptop gets more significant …

Well I left London, didn't go back home (to Berlin) either, but came to the US to learn more about Houdini (which was kind of my hobby at The Mill) and to contribute my experience with several renderers at/to Digital Domain. My old laptop was dual boot (as I said before), Windows XP was untouched on the first internal hard drive, and Linux on the second internal drive. Unfortunately the heat produced by my Dell Inspiron 8200 made the second hard drive (Linux) head crash twice (in three years). Nice to have a backup on the desktop machines …

Now I'm not traveling a lot by airplane anymore. My work is 10 minutes by bicycle from home (now Santa Monica) and when I thought about buying a new computer I thought about a desktop machine (again). Maybe an Opteron? 64 bit? …

I finally decided to buy a MacBook Pro. Being tired of all this Linux distributions (which are nice but eat a lot of your spare time as well - I liked Gentoo BTW) and having to reboot just because you want to tests something on Win32 for a moment. At work I can do that via a hotkey (having two machines sharing one monitor, mouse and keyboard) and running Win32 and Linux all the time. But for home?

Well, a friend of mine works for Sony in SF on the new Playstation 3 and he showed me his laptop. OS X, Windows, and Linux on the same machine. He even cross-compiles for the cell chip on it. I just thought: F**k it, I'm going to buy one … and guess what:

The only thing I'm really missing is: Houdini !!!

I haven't tried the WIndows <-> Linux part on OS X yet (I have the laptop just one week now). But for rendering, shader writing, plugin development, etc. I'm fine right now. Does anybody have experience with running Houdini (via Windows or Linux) on the MacBook Pro? That would be soo nice to share …

Thanks for listening/reading ;-)

Jan

Does anybody have experience with running Houdini (via Windows or Linux) on the MacBook Pro? That would be soo nice to share …

Hi.

Houdini doesn't work on Windows / Mac Book Pro too well, because of the ATI X1600 video drivers (AFAIK). You have to turn off OpenGL acceleration completly. Linux seems to be better option, as I heard that there are different video drivers, but I still have to try it. Now, I'm back to LightWave.
Let me know if you try Linux / Houdini combo

Regards,
Kami D.

Hi Jan,

Nice to see you on here

Aron over here at the Mill NY has linux running on his macbook pro and I installed houdini on it. Once he upgraded the ati drivers everything worked good. Performance was decent for a laptop. He's running opensuse for linux.

I'll be getting a macbook pro pretty soon but I'll gentoofy it for the linux boot

/Rick

Maybe we would get a better solution by sending a MacBook Pro to Toronto. Once Mark Elendt got addicted to it a Mac port is just hours away … I'll go and talk to Steve … :twisted:

P.S.: Rick, say hello to the Mill NY crew. Good to see that there is Houdini interest now (beside you) …