7 ms·

I worked as a Linux engineer at Disney Animation for 4.5 years and can attest to the great driver support Wacom has on Linux. We frequently tried new devices an

I worked as a Linux engineer at Disney Animation for 4.5 years and can attest to the great driver support Wacom has on Linux. We frequently tried new devices and always had support (user space tools were a different story).

blenderdt 5y ago
I think a lot of people underestimate how often Linux is used in the animation/VFX industry.
- JustinGarrison 5y ago
  Linux on the desktop is alive and well in the entertainment industry.
  - throwmeariver1 5y ago
    I wouldn't say well... it's definitely not as popular with artists as it was 5 years ago.
    - ladyanita22 5y ago
      What's popular now?
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      The metrics seem to disagree: https://fosspost.org/survey-shows-60-of-vfx-designers-use-linux/ https://fosspost.org/survey-shows-60-of-vfx-designers-use-li...
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Not the flavour that FSF would be happy to have though. https://vfxplatform.com https://vfxplatform.com Or Linus, given the NVidia's domain on the rendering sector.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Mostly because the animation/GFX industry doesn't care about FOSS religion and doesn't have any issue using vendor binaries or custom distributions. Thanks to SGI they were deep into UNIX already. Just like AAA studios are used to POSIX/UNIX flavoured OSes on Nintendo/Sony game consoles, macOS/iOS, Android, game servers, and that hasn't made them care more about people using GNU/Linux for their games.
  - erk__ 5y ago
    It reminds me of the first press release on the FreeBSD website from 1999: FreeBSD Used to Generate Spectacular Special Effects https://people.freebsd.org/~kuriyama/www/news/press-rel-1.html https://people.freebsd.org/~kuriyama/www/news/press-rel-1.ht...
  - jchw 5y ago
    Hell, I don’t care about the FOSS religion. FOSS is nice for the inherent benefit of just having the source code and being able to patch stuff, or pay someone else to, so I definitely like FOSS as a concept. But I don’t buy too much into the more preachy bits, myself. The true difference isn’t whether they buy into Richard Stallman style FOSS evangelism, it’s more whether they give a shit about FOSS at all. To me, when I think Nintendo or Sony, I suspect Webkit and BSD are just convenient. They happen to be some of the best options around and you don’t have to pay a license fee for them. Win/win. The animation and VFX industry seems likewise. UNIX workstations are just a norm, nobody cares much if the code is available. In many ways, this makes sense. However, it’s also a mindset shift that happens over time. I don’t think anyone should buy too hard into the moralistic preaching, mainly because even if you truly believe it, it evidently doesn’t work very well to accomplish anything. What sells people on FOSS is seeing the benefits in action. As developers, it’s very easy for us to see the benefits of FOSS in action because we can modify and compile the source code to Inkscape if we wanted to. In some cases, the benefits have become self-evident in seeing collaboration between major entities and the effects of patron-based funding, as has been seen with Blender and Krita. In that way, the average person has been able to see how it can work well first-hand. On the other hand, industry workers who use it because its standard-issue may have a very different and more pessimistic view of it.

blenderdt 5y ago

I think a lot of people underestimate how often Linux is used in the animation/VFX industry.

JustinGarrison 5y ago
Linux on the desktop is alive and well in the entertainment industry.
- throwmeariver1 5y ago
  I wouldn't say well... it's definitely not as popular with artists as it was 5 years ago.
  - ladyanita22 5y ago
    What's popular now?
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    The metrics seem to disagree: https://fosspost.org/survey-shows-60-of-vfx-designers-use-linux/ https://fosspost.org/survey-shows-60-of-vfx-designers-use-li...
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Not the flavour that FSF would be happy to have though. https://vfxplatform.com https://vfxplatform.com Or Linus, given the NVidia's domain on the rendering sector.
pjmlp 5y ago
Mostly because the animation/GFX industry doesn't care about FOSS religion and doesn't have any issue using vendor binaries or custom distributions. Thanks to SGI they were deep into UNIX already. Just like AAA studios are used to POSIX/UNIX flavoured OSes on Nintendo/Sony game consoles, macOS/iOS, Android, game servers, and that hasn't made them care more about people using GNU/Linux for their games.
- erk__ 5y ago
  It reminds me of the first press release on the FreeBSD website from 1999: FreeBSD Used to Generate Spectacular Special Effects https://people.freebsd.org/~kuriyama/www/news/press-rel-1.html https://people.freebsd.org/~kuriyama/www/news/press-rel-1.ht...
- jchw 5y ago
  Hell, I don’t care about the FOSS religion. FOSS is nice for the inherent benefit of just having the source code and being able to patch stuff, or pay someone else to, so I definitely like FOSS as a concept. But I don’t buy too much into the more preachy bits, myself. The true difference isn’t whether they buy into Richard Stallman style FOSS evangelism, it’s more whether they give a shit about FOSS at all. To me, when I think Nintendo or Sony, I suspect Webkit and BSD are just convenient. They happen to be some of the best options around and you don’t have to pay a license fee for them. Win/win. The animation and VFX industry seems likewise. UNIX workstations are just a norm, nobody cares much if the code is available. In many ways, this makes sense. However, it’s also a mindset shift that happens over time. I don’t think anyone should buy too hard into the moralistic preaching, mainly because even if you truly believe it, it evidently doesn’t work very well to accomplish anything. What sells people on FOSS is seeing the benefits in action. As developers, it’s very easy for us to see the benefits of FOSS in action because we can modify and compile the source code to Inkscape if we wanted to. In some cases, the benefits have become self-evident in seeing collaboration between major entities and the effects of patron-based funding, as has been seen with Blender and Krita. In that way, the average person has been able to see how it can work well first-hand. On the other hand, industry workers who use it because its standard-issue may have a very different and more pessimistic view of it.