[Flipside]

I'm soon (in the next 6 months) to be buying a 3GHz render server for doing my animation work, which will probably be a clean system apart from Lightwave, possibly Cubase, and a few other rendering apps.
The computer won't be called on much by the Network, it only really needs to be able to access a Network drive, since I will design the scenes on my 'main' computer and then save them onto the Network drive to be opened by the renderer. I've given up on Screamernet entirely, there a reason the word 'Scream' is at the beginning.

Hopefully, this won't turn into a flamewar, I'll have 2Gb of memory, and about 160Gigs of HD, so space isn't too much of a problem

My question is this, would it be better to be running Lightwave and the like using Linux and some kind of emulator such as Wine, or using some kind of Windows NT Server software? Basically, it's all about speed and compatability, I think even a Windows emulator may well run faster than native windows, however there may be compatability issues. I'm a complete Linux noob, so would have to learn my way round it, but judging by comments read on here, Linux is pretty accessible as long as you have a modicum of common sense.

Thoughts anyone?

[aldo_14]

I have a strong feeling Linux would be the most efficient, followed by an emulator.   Maybe you could even find a version tailored to this specific application?

But i have very little faith in windows, even though I'm forced to use it (no backup disks for several key apps, so I can't even reinstall them via an emulator).

[Flipside]

The NewTek forums are saying that Wine is a good emulator for lightwave, though there are some window focusing problems, but since I will actually be doing the designing on a Windows system (chug....chug....chug) it shouldn't really matter.

Windows is supposedly at it's best when you only have a few apps installed, which is what I'll be doing. but I suspect that Linux is just written more efficiently in the first place

[WMCoolmon]

Linux is okay if you don't want to do anything with it. After getting it all installed and running, I found it very annoying to have to investigate every single system in order to install something...what sound system do I have? Do I have the right version? If I don't, what version do I need? Should I get a higher version or does this program need this specific version? Do I have the right compiler version? What configure options should I set to compile? How do I access it now that it's installed? Why doesn't it work? Oh, I need new environment variables...where should I set those?

Blech.

If you've got the time to learn it, I'm sure it's great, but I didn't want or need Linux at the time since it just didn't seem to have a performance boost compared to Windows. At least, RH8 didn't seem to, the distro I used.

I am considering trying it out again though, since apart from games most of the stuff I use is OSS with Linux capability and it would be convenient to have a free OS. Plus I got a new distro, SusE Linux 6.2, from a computer-stuff giveaway.

Have you seen proof that Linux is just plain faster than Windows?

[Kazan]

WMCoolmon you can do a lot with linux dude

[kasperl]

If Mik was here, he would probably advice you to take some BSD variant, but I have no idea what the good points on those are.

[Flipside]

Yes, something called RedHat seems to be a firm favourite as well. I suppose this is what I am actually looking for, proof that a Linux based system running an emulator, with all the hassle of setting it up, is going to be worth it speedwise
I'll look a bit more closely at Linux as well, I really don't know enough about it atm.

[kasperl]

RedHat is easy to install, but the personal version has been dropped, IIRC.

[Kamikaze]

If you're a newbie, I advise you to go with Mandrake. I've heard some good things about Fedora 2 (Redhat's non-business distro) but I haven't used the release version (I tried a test version, didn't like it).

Also,  from my experience (with winex 3.2) emulation sometimes works with certain programs and sometimes utterly fails. I'm not sure how much you can rely on wine doing it right.

WMCoolmon: I think you should try out Mandrake. Redhat 8 (and for that matter SuSE 6.2) are ancient and Mandrake 10 will likely be much easier to use.
I've always thought Mandrake was easier for the newbie than Redhat too (again, no idea about Fedora). If you're set on using SuSE or Redhat, at least use the most recent releases for a more fair assessment.

[Flipside]

Hmmmmmmmmmm.. If there are compatibility issues in Wine, I may look for another emulator, or possibly just go with a minimal version of Windows NT or the like.

[Liberator]

Being a Linux nonothing, I would do some version of Win 2000 or XP and lock down all the ports and addresses that do not specifically connect the modeling comp to the renderer.  I would prefer familiarity in a setup like that.  Maybe you could get a linux distro and try it out and see if you like the performance/time involved ratio.  But, if you're like me, when something goes wrong I want to be able to fix it quickly and if you have to go digging through 6 lbs of documentation to find the 2 lines you need to fix it(linux) instead of probably knowing how to fix it because you've used all your life(windows) you'll go for the familiar one.

*NOTE*
this was not an attack on linux, simply a statement of the weaknesses of the OS.  they don't have a universal API for implementing devices like windows does and until they get one they'll never be able to openly compete in a desktop market.

[Flipside]

You have a point from a security aspect certainly, this thing is going to be left unattended for long periods of time, and since it is connected to the Network, it will also be connected to the Internet, so I need to keep things safe

I think a minimal installation of Windows may be the best bet, I suppose I can always make a small partition, put Linux on it and run as a 2-OS system and see how it performs

[mikhael]

Originally posted by kasperl
If Mik was here, he would probably advice you to take some BSD variant, but I have no idea what the good points on those are.

Under other circumstances, perhaps. In this case, however, I'd recommend a well supported Linux variant (an oxymoron?) if you run the emulator. However, my first recommendation for running Lightwave is Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4 and hot fixes. For Lightwave, its just as stable as Linux, and *nix OpenGL implementations tend to trail the Windows implementation by a bit.

[Flipside]

Ok, thanks for the input I think I'd just be making the options for going wrong greater by running Lightwave through Linux, I'll go with your Windows 2000 SP4 recommendation