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Linux Used To Make "Star Trek, Nemesis"
Mike McCune writes "The "Linux Journal" has a nice article about the switch
from Irix to Linux at Digital Domain and the use of Linux in 'Star Trek, Nemesis.' I guess this means that Linux is finally ready for 'The Enterprise.'"
Titanic. It was on the cover of Linux Journal back in 98/99 or whenever it came out. At the time I was astounded at what they did. Now it's getting redundant (as are these articles).
Don't go to their website though. It's slower than crap.
I'm not sure if that's true. Looking over SGI's website, they don't seem to sell ANY linux based workstations any more. Only the Fuel and the Octane2 (both IRIX/MIPS machines.)
They do have a yet-to-be-released NUMA Linux system based on Itanium, but it probably shouldn't be thought of as a workstation.
I'm guessing you're probably right though that "SGI barely sells Irix machines". Not sure how many they're selling, but they're still cettainly losing money.
Linux has replaced a significant number of NT machines at Digital Domain, both on the desktop and in the renderfarm. The machines are not being bought to replace Irix machines, they are being bought instead of Windows machines. And they are being bought for Linux itself, not because Linux is cheaper (each machine has a W2K license because they are dual-boot in case we need a huge LightWave render, and we pay for RedHat, so they are more expensive!).
Although we still have lots of Irix machines around we use them only because their cost is zero (since we already own them). Believe me Irix is not even considered in any consideration for purchases. We also have a lot of the SGI 320 NT workstations, which were a huge mistake, neither W2K or Linux work right on them. It was a direct competition between Linux and Windows and Linux won.
We could not consider Mac until OS/X came out. I understand it is quite popular at other places, and if our software is ported (which should not be hard) I think it will be popular at Digital Domain. Unless Linux GUI is improved considerably in the next 2 years it may find itself pushed back into the renderfarm and servers and off the desktop by OS/X.