A Wake-Up Call

[Vince Becquiot]

Interesting post Ron. I too, have been using Linux (Suse in my case) for a while and would love to see more larger software companies take the leap.

But, I think Linux still needs to evolve quite a bit more for that to happen. First, look at how many different releases there are. Although they are all simililar in nature, I think that keeps many users away from giving it a shot, and that makes Vista’s version options look pretty good.

I heard Dell is pushing out some machines with Linux pre-installed. I guess the best part of that is that until AOL and the likes catch up, you’ll actually start with a junk free desktop for once 😉

And let’s be honest, although there are several things I am starting to dislike about Vista, including performance issues, there are many more that I love, and that mainstream users love as well.

Also, Linux is still not as easy to install as it should be; some parts of the OS still remind me of the DOS years. Most creative designers don’t want to deal with that side of things.

Finally, with under 3% of the desktop market, I think it would be a hard sell to Adobe shareholders, but hey, we never know, let’s dream a bit, it may come true !

Cheers,

Vince

[Ron Moody]

It’s chickens and eggs.

The reason xyz developer doesn’t develop for Linux is because Linux only has a 3% market share. Or is it that the reason Linux has a 3% market share is because there aren’t apps that drive, or at least facilitate the move to Linux.

I’m arguing the latter.

I don’t care what OS I use – as long as it’s stable and fast. If however, the OS steals CPU cycles from my app, I’ll use another OS. Both OSX and Linux satisfy the criteria. And ubuntu seems to have addressed the installation and ease of use issues – from what I hear anyway. It’s certainly a good looking interface. If it doesn’t require too much in the way of RAM or CPU cycles.

I’m sold. My money goes further with Linux than with the alternatives. It’s also much easier with Linux to stay on the ‘bleeding edge’ of technology (than OSX) when I can drop in a new motherboard, or a faster CPU, or an eight core (no, this isn’t a rumor).

But you can’t do anything without the applications.

Animation and FX houses have already moved to Linux. What about the ‘rest of us’? I would like the choice.

ron

[Rhewitt]

Mmm, you’re between a rock and a hard place with Linux. Yes it’s stable, quick and free – unless you want real support and for most professional companies, support is critical used or not. Few companies will sign-off a large purchase order for anything unless a support contract is in place. Take a broadcaster for example, sure some will go for the cheap as possible option but many, many others prefer a fully supported route.

Red Hat provide that support for the OS but little else? Who would anyone turn to with problems with Adobe Apps? They can’t even support their exiting buyers for the Win platform and are very rarely upfront when there are issues. No company can sit around with kit not working while there’s staff to be paid and clients hovering over their shoulders.

Yes, some and I say SOME, animation and FX companies have moved to Unix/Linux but the majority are simply for render farms. Imagine having 2,000 workstations crunching away at renders – think of how many Windows licenses that would require! Cost again is the reason.

Many higher order FX routines are written in ‘C’ and that sits well with Unix and Linux – much of the same running on a Windows platform requires use of the Windows APIs for the GUI or access to memory or files – it’s just easier on a Unix/Linux box.

For Linux to be taken more seriously by the PC using population who have mostly grown-up on Windows, it needs to shed its geeky image, drop the dumb names for applications and move into the same world that the potential customer moves in. When that happens it’ll make the big application houses sit up and listen.

Am I a Windows user? Sure I am – that’s what my applications run on. And Linux? Yes I use that too for the apps and server applications I use everyday for my job, but then it’s a specialist job in the Feature Film & Broadcast TV industry and even then most of our client applications run on Windows.

[Harm Millaard]

You could opt for Autodesk Smoke 2007 Extension 1. It runs on Linux and in the good, fast, and cheap paradigm, Smoke is good and fast.

[Mike Smith]

I’d be in the customer market for this too.

It most likely wouldn’t be a cheaper option – my guess is there would be a software price premium, but a performance gain. Autodesk doesn’t appear to have much trouble making its prices stick.

It would be good to see budget professional software on this platform – Adobe suite in 64 bit version? Could be great for dedicated production machines. Apple won’t go there, no doubt, and Avid has its own strategy needs in protecting its higher-end offerings, so might not be keen.

Software project wise, I guess they must anyway be breaking the code up so far as possible into core logic and interface: not that adding a third interface would be a small task, but once written it might be able to spread quickly over the product family.

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Ron Moody] “I don’t care what OS I use…”

Then, using your own ‘chicken and egg’ argument, I would use one that has applications available — perhaps one like Windows or maybe a Mac?

[Ron Moody] “Animation and FX houses have already moved to Linux.”

Most of them write their own custom software and there are few here who are capable of this herculean feat.

Lastly, one of the biggest reasons that Adobe (and others) do not write for Linux, is that the one in which most Linux users use one of the variant versions — Red Hat, Ubuntu, etc. — and each of these requires considerable set-up on the part of the user. Few know how to do that. We have a guy here at the COW whose job is to do that and in years of working with him, are either Kathlyn or I ready to eschew our Macs and PCs to run Linux fulltime? No. Sure we’ve learned some things and we can scribble our way around in Linux, but let’s be kind and say that Linux is not for mortals. If God needed a computer to help create and render the universe, it would have been running under Linux.

The masses are not on Linux and likely never will be. Those who are the true power users on the Linux platform, often write their own tools and apps. It’s that Mount Olympus thingie, and Kathlyn and I jokingly call these kinds of users “The Children of Olympus.”

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

[Ron Lindeboom]

[RHewitt] “Red Hat provide that support for the OS but little else? Who would anyone turn to with problems with Adobe Apps? They can’t even support their exiting buyers for the Win platform”

Red Hat has basically spun off a Linux variant and sells it and offers support. It’s their product.

Likewise, Adobe also sells support. They have been doing it for a few years now. Yes, gone are the days when you just picked up the phone and called Adobe but you can buy service contracts and Adobe is and remains very aggressive with solving the issues of those on these contracts. (Am I saying that they write custom fixes for them? No, that is left to those who are on Linux, running their own custom apps developed and supported in-house. That is the main point of Linux in the film world, after all.)

But for those who do not want to pay for additional support, they just come to forums like these or use Google to find their answers. I can’t tell you the number of people who have signed up at the COW who tell us they were referred here by a manufacturer — it happens all the time.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

[Ron Moody]

[Ron Lindeboom] “Then, using your own ‘chicken and egg’ argument, I would use one that has applications available — perhaps one like Windows or maybe a Mac?”

Great name, Ron. I do use both Windows and Mac. I’ve been using Premiere on the PC since Win95 and the Miro DC30 card (remember that one?) I’ve been transitioning to the Mac since the beginning of the year. The weekly TV shows still go out on the PC. DVD’s mostly go out through the PC since I know Encore better than DVD studio – for now anyway.

LiveType and Motion on the Mac allow me to add polish to projects quickly and give a different look; a very nice look I might add.

I’m moving to the Mac primarily because of a trend I see over the past several years. Every version of the Windows OS since version 3 has been slower than the previous with the exception of Win2K. Those who migrated from 98 to XP never even saw that exception. (You’re obviously seeing my perspective here – I don’t offer any metrics to back up my opinion, it’s my opinion based on my experience, nothing more.)

It bothered me greatly when Adobe forced me to move to XP with Premiere Pro and the CS line. I know. They had to do it because of improved programming tools in XP that allowed them to turn the new versions of software out faster. At least, that’s the argument that was presented at that time. But I didn’t like being forced to a slower OS when Win2K and Premiere 6.0 rendered the same project twice as fast as PPro on XP.

I haven’t done tests on Vista, but I have read reviews and tests. I don’t care about bells and whistles. Is it stable and is it fast are the two main questions. While it does appear to be stable, it doesn’t appear fast. It seems slower by about the same margins as XP was slower than Win2K.

For that reason, I’ve basically jumped ship from Windows. I’ve lost hope in that product line because I see no trend towards improvement in work throughput using Windows based tools.

When I said “I don’t care…” it came with a qualifier. The qualifier was “as long as it’s stable and fast.” Windows no longer meets that spec in my opinion. That leaves OSX. It’s a great OS and I have no complaints. However, in a free market, everything improves with competition. OSX needs some competition. The only player in the marketplace that can give OSX competition is Linux.

I don’t play with computers, or with operating systems. Once it works, I leave it alone. If I have to tweak it a bit to get it there, fine. But once it’s working, the OS becomes invisible to me. I don’t care what it is once it does its job. When I wait fifteen seconds for my root drive to display files in the file system, that means Windows is no longer invisible.

If Linux can become invisible and allow me to do my work, supporting mainstream apps and making me productive, it becomes a viable alternative.

I believe with ubuntu and the positive trends I see in the Linux marketplace, they have entered the race as a viable alternative.

I do have one frustration with OSX I guess. Quicktime has a built-in limitation that limits its ability to output files to AVI to (Apple says) about five minutes. I’ve been able to output about ten. You can create a 28:30 show in AVI format, but only the first ten minutes of that AVI are usable. My production pipeline relies on dumping AVI files to tape using hardware that does not support Quicktime. That’s a huge problem that at least so far, no-one seems to be addressing. I’m wondering if Adobe has a work-around for their Mac based suite, but they only answer I’ve been able to wrangle from them so far is “We won’t know the specifics of that software until it is actually released.” So if they know, they’re not talking.

Sorry this was so long. But I’m enjoying the thread. Makes you say hmmmmmmmmm.

ron from Maui

[Ron Moody]

Here’s an idea. Let’s call it Adobe Ubuntu Production Suite.

It’s priced the same as the Windows or OSX versions. It comes bundled with Ubuntu and installs both OS and Suite at the same time on a formatted hard drive. Adobe spec’s out the requirements, half-a-dozen video cards have optimized drivers already installed in the OS. The same is true of audio, motherboard, and hard drives.

The bundle comes with six months of support, after which you pay Adobe, which supports both the OS and the app suite. They only support the range of hardware they specify. Beyond that, you’re on your own. That simplifies support issues for them of course. I’ll bet this would be simpler to support than Vista or XP, for which an infinite variety of Video cards, sound cards, network cards, etc. are all intermixed.

The Production Suite Premium version adds premium versions of specific programs like AfterEffects along with one other perk. There are two one-gig USB thumbs configured with the barebones version of Ubuntu, along with the render engine for AfterEffects. These can be placed in ‘any’ (if bootable by USB) computer on the network to render larger projects. To clarify, you don’t download the software or OS, it runs on the thumb. In fact, you could even forgo drivers for the hard disks to ensure that the client PC’s wouldn’t be changed in any way. Additional thumbs would be available at $49.95 each. Each thumb would be copy protected so you couldn’t dup it. In effect, you could have a short term rendering farm on demand at $50 per PC, but without install and support issues. I suppose AfterEffects could check with Adobe’s registration site to ensure that the thumbs were legal the first time they were used.

I’d buy that suite! I’ll bet many would.

[Steven L. gotz]

The problem I have with this, as an Adobe stockholder, is the word “many”.

How many? Enough to pay for not only the development, but to make up for the lost opportunities from having those engineers on a more important (to me) project? I doubt it.

If there was enough money in this, I know Adobe would jump on it. But they are not in the business of spending $1.00 to get $0.25 back. Multiple that by 10 million and it is probably about the right number.

Steven
https://www.stevengotz.com