tommywright
March 1st, 2011, 07:47 PM
I work in the vfx industry and started using Linux on my first film back in 2004. I despised Linux at the time. Looking back, I'm not even sure why but I openly bitched about it on a daily basis. Eventually I gave in and learned it because all the major fx and animation houses are exclusively Linux and I've had to work for almost all of them now.
A couple of years ago, I got this gig at a game company that used Windows again and thought... cool, I get to use Windows. Holy crap was that a nightmare. We ended up doing almost everything in Cygwin (which is basically Linux inside Windows).
During that time, my wife got this little netbook computer from Dell. It had Ubuntu pre-installed. I had never seen Ubuntu before and as i got to playing with it, I thought wow, what a fun little Linux distro. The more I played with it and the more I struggled with Windows at work, the more I started to realize that Linux (Ubuntu in particular) was really great!
It only took 7 years to figure it out but now I have almost completely converted to Ubuntu at home. Even my game computer (after Win7 crapped out on it twice) is now running Ubuntu and I'm still playing BF2 with my buddies thanks to Wine. I'm sure I'll dual boot it eventually being that I payed big bucks for my Win7 license but I'm in no hurry.
One of the big things keeping me on Windows was Mudbox on my Cintiq (I enjoy sculpting for fun). I was walking by someones desk here at Imageworks the other day and saw them running Mudbox, with their Cintiq, in Linux. :o I'll have to ask around as to how to get that at home but it's obviously possible.
I don't know why I'm writing all this other than it recently dawned on me that I'm a Linux fan. I mean, I don't own any stuffed penguins or anything.. but I'm a real fan! The applications that I use most (Maya and Nuke) run much better under Linux and it's just easier to manage frames using bash scripts.
Anyhow.. that's my story.
A couple of years ago, I got this gig at a game company that used Windows again and thought... cool, I get to use Windows. Holy crap was that a nightmare. We ended up doing almost everything in Cygwin (which is basically Linux inside Windows).
During that time, my wife got this little netbook computer from Dell. It had Ubuntu pre-installed. I had never seen Ubuntu before and as i got to playing with it, I thought wow, what a fun little Linux distro. The more I played with it and the more I struggled with Windows at work, the more I started to realize that Linux (Ubuntu in particular) was really great!
It only took 7 years to figure it out but now I have almost completely converted to Ubuntu at home. Even my game computer (after Win7 crapped out on it twice) is now running Ubuntu and I'm still playing BF2 with my buddies thanks to Wine. I'm sure I'll dual boot it eventually being that I payed big bucks for my Win7 license but I'm in no hurry.
One of the big things keeping me on Windows was Mudbox on my Cintiq (I enjoy sculpting for fun). I was walking by someones desk here at Imageworks the other day and saw them running Mudbox, with their Cintiq, in Linux. :o I'll have to ask around as to how to get that at home but it's obviously possible.
I don't know why I'm writing all this other than it recently dawned on me that I'm a Linux fan. I mean, I don't own any stuffed penguins or anything.. but I'm a real fan! The applications that I use most (Maya and Nuke) run much better under Linux and it's just easier to manage frames using bash scripts.
Anyhow.. that's my story.