Tarkus

thanks. gonna install Ubuntu 7.10 now.
i will keep my suse 10.3 installed and hopefully get it working sooner or later.

thanks again everyone for the helpful responses.

has anyone found a fix to this issue? i really want to get setup properly with a stable distro running my VFX packages. should i install ubuntu 7.10 that came out yesterday? or should i try out fedora 7?? (wait for fedora 8?)

also another thing. i am having a hard time deciding if i should try KDE/Qt.. i have always used Gnome/GTK, as KDE seems ugly imo and not as well polished as gnome can be. but Qt seems interesting.. any suggestions here? does one play better with houdini/realflow than the other?

this is really disapointing that my experieince setting up my work environment in linux has been such a nightmare.

thanks in advance guys. would really like to get this setup working.

thanks. so what is your recommended solution to keeping up-to-date with software and technologies, but also having a stable cg/vfx workstation? an Enterprise linux? (from Redhat or Novell)

i would be using this system both as a workstation and desktop. i would prefer to have one partition/os for both in conjunction.. but for desktop i enjoy having bleeding-edge technology (XGL, compiz-fusion, newest distros, etc.. although im not even sure if houdini works while compiz is running?) and it seems that it might be a good idea to have one partition with a stable enterprise linux (for vfx work). and another partition with a community maintaned version of the distro (desktop, etc..).

let me know what you think is most suitable.. my only draw to windows is that i will have editing software in windows… video/audio editing is almost non-existent in linux (the OSS alternatives are garbage right now). other than that there is no reason why i would use windows. its slow and hogs all my resources. (dont even get me started with vista).. i mean the school i am planning on attending has a houdini/nuke certification course i might be taking. and both those applications run great on linux. i have also heard great things about maya and realflow in a linux environment.

now. i know i may get very biased opinions on the topic of linux distros.. but what do you think is a safe approach for me to get a good desktop/workstation setup?

thanks again for all the help so far, i appreciate it very much guys.