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Well this is a great step in the right direction, but what I would realy like to see is some of those powerful 3D tools ported to linux. Currently we have POVRAY, and Blender 3D as free, or virtualy free full fledged packages. There are some comercial packages that most of us can not afford like Houdini (sorry I dont know the url, I cant afford it so I dont keep it handy), but a good package in the smae price range is an absolute necesity. Blender 3D is nice, but it's modeler is not as easy to use as such *indo*s packages as Lightwave and 3D Studio Max. We have GIMP, now we need LinuxWave or 3D Studio Linux, and maybe this is a step in the right direction. Unfortunatly I doubt Maya will be affordable either and it's unfortunate, as it is an awsome program. If anyone with any pull is reading this or if someone wants to send me some other options I would be most happy to finaly dismiss windows as only needed to play Asheron's Call. What a wonderful day that will be and the masses shall rejoice and the evil giant will feel yet another foot being slamed into a most uncomfortable place!

Jeez, man. Pull your head out of your ass. I'm a poor college student with a small budget, and I'm no genius- but I can make Linux do wonderful cool things like play my damn StarCraft game whenever I find the need to. I can use it to write my term papers, my reports for French (because of the incredible internationalization) and all of my presentation crap. I'm not that exceptional- maybe you use the wrong distro if you can't get anything done on Linux.

I mean, what else do I need from a computer? I can do email, type my papers, make presentations (with the KOffice components, which are a blessing), do 2D and 3D graphic design (GIMP and Blender), use the Net with Netscape Communicator or Mozilla, program in various languages (C++, C, Python....), Instant Message with my friends, and play the greatest computer game of all time- StarCraft. What else could you expect from a computer? I don't know, but I also expect it to stay up for weeks and months at a time- which Windows FAILS at miserably.

Peace, and maybe it's time to re-check some of what you said.

why does graphics software made by large companies always cost an arm and a leg? 3ds Max, Maya, Softimage, etc, all cost more than most hardware when equally excellent graphics packages such as blender are freely available with advanced features available at rates under $100 US.

This is one of those multi-thousand dollar modelling packages, isn't it?

Personally, I think the open source modellers are getting to the point where they are adequate (if not ideal) for most modelling purposes.

The not open source but free modeller, Blender, from Not a Number is quite powerful, as well (though it's UI is the worst of any program I've ever used. A good example of how a UI can look good but be absolutely impossible to use). Moonlight Creator is open source, and was getting quite good; unfortunately, there's not been a release or any update by the author since June of last year.

For rendering, the open source renderers can for the most part compete with commercial packages in technical features, though do lack a bit of the UI polish.

With all that said, having a high quality, polished commercial package available would be nice!