More on LoTR Special Effects

sushi writes: "Another LoTR article: this one focusing on the technology used at Weta Digital (the CG shop). Interesting that they are undertaking "major" R&D into running more Linux, and that Linux "delivers about two times the price performance compared to systems running proprietary operating systems". I've been lucky enough to have seen inside this place, and it's cool to see a render-wall of linux boxen. Full story from a New Zealand newspaper." We linked to another good article about WETA a month ago.

Comments

News for nerds???

[/ASCII]

This is not news. It's pr0n!!!!

Troll?

[Astral Traveller]

I'm serious. Why are you so small-minded and petty that you cry troll at the slightest provocation? I love Linux, love seeing it being adopted by IBM, the MPAA, Sony, and other big companies, but I'm also annoyed that it does all this flashy stuff while still not getting the basics right. I'm sorry if I offended you, but you need to grow up and be a little less closed-minded.

Re:Troll?

[mandolin]

Why are you so small-minded and petty that you cry troll at the slightest provocation?

Fine, I'll bite. That's not slightest provocation. You offer one paragraph of barely on-topicness immediately sequeing into three paragraphs of rehashed rant.

Linux falls on its face for mundane day-to-day productivity work.

That depends on what you use it for doesn't it?

it can't even open a simple Word document without formatting errors.

StarOffice (you did say "simple" Word documents..)

Linux stills falls short of Windows when playing Quake.

Client benchmarks that I have seen are dominated by graphics card/driver combinations and as such are dependent on the card vendor. Indeed in the case of the matrox g200 I could actually *play* qIII linux while matrox sat on their asses and refused to release a working windows opengl driver for the longest time. People generally favor linux for quake servers.

If all the man-hours poured into KDE and GNOME were combined into a common vision, we would have one perfect end-user desktop, instead of two poor imitations of Windows.

My guess is we'd just have one "poor imitation of Windows" as you call it. The practical weakness in your argument is deciding whose vision should be followed.

Don't give me the old "competition" argument either. There is only one Linux kernel, which seems to progress just fine without another competing project nipping at its feet and instigating flamewars.

*BSD. To a lesser extent, Windows itself. And to a still-lesser extent, GNU/Hurd, which if everybody had swallowed their ego (and worked on it instead of that upstart Linux) probably still wouldn't be ready for prime time.

The endless KDE vs. GNOME, Applix vs. StarOffice, and other feuds have wasted more productivity than would be gained by and competitive drive.

These feuds are generally propagated by users such as yourself rather than the actual developers. As such, little productivity is lost.

I, for one, am somewhat miffed that while my operating system powers Hollywood blockbusters and NASA supercomputers, it still can't fully replace Windows on my office desktop.

Show me one instance where you have properly submitted a bug report/feature request for any of these office programs you need and I'll reconsider dismissing you as an opinionated parasite.

Sincerely, a fellow opinionated parasite

Re:Interesting, isn't it?

[spencerogden]

Two points, (Sorry for feeding the trolls)

First, who has the right approach, KDE or GNOME? Which system is better? If we don't know that it would be a mistake to devote all of our energy to one. Second, the kernel has no competition? What about BSD?

Re:Interesting, isn't it?

[ChadN]

And what have YOU, personally, done to help remedy this perceived problem, other than bring up this (oft repeated, and spurriously argued) point of view?

Opening a Word document is difficult, because it requires lots of reverse engineering, and many people do play Quake at roughly equal performance under Linux or Windows. XFree is popular because it is FREE, the others you mentioned are commercial (and with other advantages and disadvantages).

So, no, it really isn't all that interesting. It is a banal view point; if things aren't improving in your specific area quick enough for you, then do something about it (coding, guidance, money, bug fixing, bug reporting, whatever) It seems to me that YOU have the ego problem, expecting that everything should do exactly what you want.

Besides, you are WAY off topic.

Re:Interesting, isn't it?

[Astral Traveller]

(Sorry for feeding the trolls)

Don't be. I am not a troll, and am well-fed besides. :-)

First, who has the right approach, KDE or GNOME? Which system is better? If we don't know that it would be a mistake to devote all of our energy to one.

Well it should have been obvious from day one that KDE was the better target. GNOME was a hastily-thrown-together mishmash of whatever GPL programs were available at the time, put out solely for the purpose of avoiding the "corrupting" influence of Qt (a point which is moot today) and destroying KDE. KDE was and is planned out; detailed release schedules are maintained and are met more often than not, because everything being done to the core KDE framework is well-planned in advance. Can you tell me, with any certainty, when the next version of GNOME will be thrown together, and what improvements the new version will bring? (I'm sorry for sounding trollish, but GNOME really is a mess. What were they thinking when they decided to do everything in C? Why do I need to install 34 different packages with extremely fragile version dependencies in order to get it running?)

Second, the kernel has no competition? What about BSD?

The *BSD developers make no pretensions of competing with Linux; their development focuses most on its strengths as a server, router and general network bit-pusher. If they were attempting to compete with Linux, you would see more work put in towards implementing 3D support, low-latency patches and other multimedia enhancements Linux has been making great strides in. The fact is, 200FPS in Quake is worthless on a server, and they don't try to compete in this arena. BSD and Linux complement each other, they don't compete.