The problem with learning Linux is not the command line, GUI(s), or program set, for which there are countless books (the O'Reilly ones are particularly good, and the Unleashed set are also nice, both linked above by others). I find that the problem is when you have a severe difficulty, there's few ways to come across a decent set of information on how to fix it.
Learning linux requires two computers; one that runs whatever distro you've chosen, and another running a commercial, PNP OS that's internet ready so you can scan mailing lists, websites, and other things when your X Server refuses to start or your sound card thinks it's a modem (a problem I had a few years back, if you can believe it). (Dual booting is out because of the time required to reboot, attempt a fix, and then begin the search process anew.) The great bulk of books released aren't about solving problems, or have quick troubleshooting sections that only solve a handful of easily-fixed difficulties. Really learning Linux is about finding the info on your hardware config so that you can go in and edit the config files by hand.
What makes this harder is that no two distros are alike, and most of them now have their own "proprietary" (though OSS) configuration wizards, etc. Debian and Slackware are too intimidating for most newbies, and learning Red Hat config is worlds apart from Mandrake or SuSE.
So in the end, people can recommend whatever general knowledge books they want on console commands and GUI usage, but as anyone who's gone through their linux infancy knows, it comes down to searching the web and reading endless page after man page for your configuration, and that's something few books touch upon in a satisfactory manner.
However, if you really want to get people used to Linux, I've found lately that an easy migration path is Apple's OS X. I'll probably get shot for saying it, but the underpinnings work just as well as most Linux distros, and it's a great place for people to learn the command line (the real workhorse) in an environment with a safety net and no hardware worries before letting them jump into the hardcore life. Just a thought, and after a few software upgrades from GNU mirrors, the OS X console is almost indistinguishable from any other unix variant.
Not to mention, it's only a few short steps from OS X to yellowdog. ^.^
I've been doing CG for over 7 years now. I started on 3D Studio R4, moved to 3D Studio Max 1.2, then to trueSpace 3 (yes, I went from Max to trueSpace, and boy was I happy). For a while I used Lightwave 5.5 for animation. Recently I've been using Blender, and I'm more than happy with the results it gets.
You've asked about features, things like NURBS and other modeling tools. NURBS is a cute way to model things. The use of bezier splines, in effect, gives you the curved surfaces required for many real-life objects quite quickly, and can scale quite nicely to your hardware for display purposes. The problem with NURBS is that they're harder to set up for animation without first converting them into a standard mesh. And once you've converted them into a mesh in most apps, you can't go back, so if you want to make a change to the original NURBS cage you have to start all over again.
Modern apps support a relatively newish technique called subdivision modelling. Lightwave, I think, was the first to support this (they called it metanurbs or something strange). Basically, you rough out the shape with polygons and low-poly editing tools, then apply a smoother to the mesh. This works marvelously well in most cases, and I wouldn't recommend a package without this feature (I remember the entry-level Maya package, for a while, came without it.) I've used it to do everything from people to bathroom geometry to cars, and it all works quite well with subdiv.
However, in the end you have to choose what's right for your own artistic style of creation. Many people will disagree with me on the NURBS issue, and they'd be right -- for them. You need to play with both and figure out what you like.
If you can afford it, I recommend Lightwave. It's what's used on most high-end animation projects these days (Pixar uses Lightwave Modeler for all its movies, then dumps the geometry into custom software for shading), and once you start using it, you'll never look back. The books that come with it are decent for people who've used other 3D packages, but there's also a bevy of great newbie-friendly books out there, as well as thousands of website-based tutorials. Lastly, it runs on Mac, but it also runs on PC and some variant of unix (I forget which), with an uniform interface on every machine, so like Photoshop it won't matter much where you're using it. The skills transfer almost invisibly.
However, do not make the mistake of dismissing Blender. People bitch about the renderer because it doesn't support many features in modern renderers and doesn't use shaders. You know what? You likely won't miss them. Caustics can be faked with minimal effort even in animation. And for all the complaining, the test renders I've gotten out of Blender are good, and reasonably high quality. The problem with it is the learning curve. The best bet is to get the books from the blender e-shop, and go from there. It's expensive, but nowhere near as bad as buying lightwave outright. Also, blender is in opensource development now, and will be supporting a lot more neat new stuff in the future, like a renderman-compliant renderer and (hopefully) the ability to compress renders into quicktime movies. Oh, on stability: Blender OS X cannot render to a window -- you must render to a view. That will solve most of your problems. Also, be sure to download the 2.25 publisher beta and not the old 2.23 beta from the blender.org site. The publisher beta is what I've been using for three months now on my iBook, and it works just fine.
On Blender speed: rendering speed is increased a lot by rendering from the command line. Search the forums on this, especially on www.elysiun.com. Also, I think that Blender handles all its own double-buffering, which under OS X isn't required as Aqua double-buffers all windows automatically. This means that stuff is getting copies twice as much per frame, slowing things down. I haven't looked too closely at the sources, but I think that's where the slowdown is occurring, and I hope it'll be fixed next version.
In the end: don't listen to me too much. Check out all the apps, and see what you like best. But I highly recommend both lightwave and blender for my fellow OS X enthusiasts.
Okay. No backlight and 2 meg of ram. The Palm m105 has 8 meg of ram, and a backlight, plus that clock button and retails for the same price (I got mine for 10$ lower!) with identical features. Oh wait, the m105 also comes with the Office applications for spreadsheets and word docs on your handheld. Oh, and the m105 uses palmOS 3.5 while the Zire uses 4.1. But aside from that, the change is mostly cosmetic. Thoughts on this?
If you're running Jaguar, you may be able to get the iBook to recognize the linux machine as a router or vice versa (or fake windows filesharing using Samba and Rendevous). I've never had to work with filesizes over 4g, so FAT32 works fine for me, but you might consider transferring files over a standard ethernet connection instead, and then backing those files up from the linux machine onto the firewire drive.
I like the licensing scheme in Maya. There's a downloadable learning edition which has all the basic functionality of the purchase version and a tonne of online docs. The difference between the two versions is that they can't read each other's files and the learning edition's rendering has a watermark embedded over top.
I personally think that Blender is a better solution for people on no budget, but if you really need to learn Maya at home the Personal Learning Edition is great. Other companies should follow suit with similiar programs.
... 'cause I know Verizon can add a list of accepted phone numbers to any line at a low cost (like 5-10$ a month I think?). Apparently, someone who calls who's not on the list can leave their name, and then you can check through the list of names rejected and okay or reject people permanently. Just tell whomever's faxing you to call first, because you've installed a new system.
If I remember correctly, there's a signal sent between the commercials and the shows already that could be used to skip commercial recording. There was a VCR in the 80's that did this, and it got axed quickly. But even if they've removed that signal, there's still a longer pause of black screen between commercial breaks and regular shows that does not show up between commercials, leading me to believe that a smart coder could coax a PVR deck into pausing during those breaks.
Then again, with the upcoming switch to digital, they might remove this altogether.
Personally, I don't mind commercials when they're funny and non-repetative. Right now I'm seeing the same commercials every break, and that's just plain annoying. I think there should be some sort of regulation on how many times a commercial can play per hour. Also, as a guy, I'm sick of having to sit through Secret and Tampax commercials, because they simply don't apply to me. I wouldn't mind selecting 5 types of commercials to watch, or commercials from particular vendors (most car ads bother me, but I kind of like the VW ones). But that's probably not going to happen as, I think, TV networks are starved for advertisers and don't have much of an option on repeating commercials.
Obviously the "you listen to what we want you to listen" phase of America isn't completely out -- look at the runaway success of American Idol. *shudders* Did nobody see Josie and the Pussycats? (Read: yes, I'm joking.)
The reason people aren't buying new CD's from old artists is a complete lack of metamorphosis. Look at Michael Jackson's Invincible. It's okay, but it's basically redone themes from Dangerous and Bad. People were expecting something revolutionary from him, and yet he's still singing with lyrics from the 80's. Here's a hint Michael, from a long time fan: people don't want to hear that you can't get girls any more, or that you're crying for children somewhere. NOBODY CARES. Your drum beats in tracks one and two are amazing, however.
I think that the RIAA should stop shooting itself in the foot. What services like the late Napster and my current favorite LimeWire provide is FREE MARKET RESEARCH. Has the RIAA thought about paying these services for logs of music swapped by artist, year, genre, etc? It would be a gold mine. Instead of six bands that sound like 3 Doors Down/Nickelback (still can't tell the differnece between those two), we might get some heavy Goth Industrial, or an american release of a foreign album.
Also, you could go further and see who swaps music in what region, send less copies of CD's to places where they wouldn't get bought, and adjust advertising accordingly.
So with that kind of power coming from 10 different filesharing sources, I wonder why the RIAA is sueing instead of subsidizing. Nobody's going to use an RIAA-developed sharing service, but the RIAA can certainly use publically-available ones. That's just good capitalism.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with learning Linux is not the command line, GUI(s), or program set, for which there are countless books (the O'Reilly ones are particularly good, and the Unleashed set are also nice, both linked above by others). I find that the problem is when you have a severe difficulty, there's few ways to come across a decent set of information on how to fix it.
Learning linux requires two computers; one that runs whatever distro you've chosen, and another running a commercial, PNP OS that's internet ready so you can scan mailing lists, websites, and other things when your X Server refuses to start or your sound card thinks it's a modem (a problem I had a few years back, if you can believe it). (Dual booting is out because of the time required to reboot, attempt a fix, and then begin the search process anew.) The great bulk of books released aren't about solving problems, or have quick troubleshooting sections that only solve a handful of easily-fixed difficulties. Really learning Linux is about finding the info on your hardware config so that you can go in and edit the config files by hand.
What makes this harder is that no two distros are alike, and most of them now have their own "proprietary" (though OSS) configuration wizards, etc. Debian and Slackware are too intimidating for most newbies, and learning Red Hat config is worlds apart from Mandrake or SuSE.
So in the end, people can recommend whatever general knowledge books they want on console commands and GUI usage, but as anyone who's gone through their linux infancy knows, it comes down to searching the web and reading endless page after man page for your configuration, and that's something few books touch upon in a satisfactory manner.
However, if you really want to get people used to Linux, I've found lately that an easy migration path is Apple's OS X. I'll probably get shot for saying it, but the underpinnings work just as well as most Linux distros, and it's a great place for people to learn the command line (the real workhorse) in an environment with a safety net and no hardware worries before letting them jump into the hardcore life. Just a thought, and after a few software upgrades from GNU mirrors, the OS X console is almost indistinguishable from any other unix variant.
Not to mention, it's only a few short steps from OS X to yellowdog. ^.^
I've been doing CG for over 7 years now. I started on 3D Studio R4, moved to 3D Studio Max 1.2, then to trueSpace 3 (yes, I went from Max to trueSpace, and boy was I happy). For a while I used Lightwave 5.5 for animation. Recently I've been using Blender, and I'm more than happy with the results it gets.
You've asked about features, things like NURBS and other modeling tools. NURBS is a cute way to model things. The use of bezier splines, in effect, gives you the curved surfaces required for many real-life objects quite quickly, and can scale quite nicely to your hardware for display purposes. The problem with NURBS is that they're harder to set up for animation without first converting them into a standard mesh. And once you've converted them into a mesh in most apps, you can't go back, so if you want to make a change to the original NURBS cage you have to start all over again.
Modern apps support a relatively newish technique called subdivision modelling. Lightwave, I think, was the first to support this (they called it metanurbs or something strange). Basically, you rough out the shape with polygons and low-poly editing tools, then apply a smoother to the mesh. This works marvelously well in most cases, and I wouldn't recommend a package without this feature (I remember the entry-level Maya package, for a while, came without it.) I've used it to do everything from people to bathroom geometry to cars, and it all works quite well with subdiv.
However, in the end you have to choose what's right for your own artistic style of creation. Many people will disagree with me on the NURBS issue, and they'd be right -- for them. You need to play with both and figure out what you like.
If you can afford it, I recommend Lightwave. It's what's used on most high-end animation projects these days (Pixar uses Lightwave Modeler for all its movies, then dumps the geometry into custom software for shading), and once you start using it, you'll never look back. The books that come with it are decent for people who've used other 3D packages, but there's also a bevy of great newbie-friendly books out there, as well as thousands of website-based tutorials. Lastly, it runs on Mac, but it also runs on PC and some variant of unix (I forget which), with an uniform interface on every machine, so like Photoshop it won't matter much where you're using it. The skills transfer almost invisibly.
However, do not make the mistake of dismissing Blender. People bitch about the renderer because it doesn't support many features in modern renderers and doesn't use shaders. You know what? You likely won't miss them. Caustics can be faked with minimal effort even in animation. And for all the complaining, the test renders I've gotten out of Blender are good, and reasonably high quality. The problem with it is the learning curve. The best bet is to get the books from the blender e-shop, and go from there. It's expensive, but nowhere near as bad as buying lightwave outright. Also, blender is in opensource development now, and will be supporting a lot more neat new stuff in the future, like a renderman-compliant renderer and (hopefully) the ability to compress renders into quicktime movies. Oh, on stability: Blender OS X cannot render to a window -- you must render to a view. That will solve most of your problems. Also, be sure to download the 2.25 publisher beta and not the old 2.23 beta from the blender.org site. The publisher beta is what I've been using for three months now on my iBook, and it works just fine.
On Blender speed: rendering speed is increased a lot by rendering from the command line. Search the forums on this, especially on www.elysiun.com. Also, I think that Blender handles all its own double-buffering, which under OS X isn't required as Aqua double-buffers all windows automatically. This means that stuff is getting copies twice as much per frame, slowing things down. I haven't looked too closely at the sources, but I think that's where the slowdown is occurring, and I hope it'll be fixed next version.
In the end: don't listen to me too much. Check out all the apps, and see what you like best. But I highly recommend both lightwave and blender for my fellow OS X enthusiasts.
Okay. No backlight and 2 meg of ram. The Palm m105 has 8 meg of ram, and a backlight, plus that clock button and retails for the same price (I got mine for 10$ lower!) with identical features. Oh wait, the m105 also comes with the Office applications for spreadsheets and word docs on your handheld. Oh, and the m105 uses palmOS 3.5 while the Zire uses 4.1. But aside from that, the change is mostly cosmetic. Thoughts on this?
If you're running Jaguar, you may be able to get the iBook to recognize the linux machine as a router or vice versa (or fake windows filesharing using Samba and Rendevous). I've never had to work with filesizes over 4g, so FAT32 works fine for me, but you might consider transferring files over a standard ethernet connection instead, and then backing those files up from the linux machine onto the firewire drive.
It's not a perfect solution, but it could work.
I like the licensing scheme in Maya. There's a downloadable learning edition which has all the basic functionality of the purchase version and a tonne of online docs. The difference between the two versions is that they can't read each other's files and the learning edition's rendering has a watermark embedded over top.
I personally think that Blender is a better solution for people on no budget, but if you really need to learn Maya at home the Personal Learning Edition is great. Other companies should follow suit with similiar programs.
... 'cause I know Verizon can add a list of accepted phone numbers to any line at a low cost (like 5-10$ a month I think?). Apparently, someone who calls who's not on the list can leave their name, and then you can check through the list of names rejected and okay or reject people permanently. Just tell whomever's faxing you to call first, because you've installed a new system.
I'd bet other providers offer the same.
If I remember correctly, there's a signal sent between the commercials and the shows already that could be used to skip commercial recording. There was a VCR in the 80's that did this, and it got axed quickly. But even if they've removed that signal, there's still a longer pause of black screen between commercial breaks and regular shows that does not show up between commercials, leading me to believe that a smart coder could coax a PVR deck into pausing during those breaks.
Then again, with the upcoming switch to digital, they might remove this altogether.
Personally, I don't mind commercials when they're funny and non-repetative. Right now I'm seeing the same commercials every break, and that's just plain annoying. I think there should be some sort of regulation on how many times a commercial can play per hour. Also, as a guy, I'm sick of having to sit through Secret and Tampax commercials, because they simply don't apply to me. I wouldn't mind selecting 5 types of commercials to watch, or commercials from particular vendors (most car ads bother me, but I kind of like the VW ones). But that's probably not going to happen as, I think, TV networks are starved for advertisers and don't have much of an option on repeating commercials.
Obviously the "you listen to what we want you to listen" phase of America isn't completely out -- look at the runaway success of American Idol. *shudders* Did nobody see Josie and the Pussycats? (Read: yes, I'm joking.) The reason people aren't buying new CD's from old artists is a complete lack of metamorphosis. Look at Michael Jackson's Invincible. It's okay, but it's basically redone themes from Dangerous and Bad. People were expecting something revolutionary from him, and yet he's still singing with lyrics from the 80's. Here's a hint Michael, from a long time fan: people don't want to hear that you can't get girls any more, or that you're crying for children somewhere. NOBODY CARES. Your drum beats in tracks one and two are amazing, however. I think that the RIAA should stop shooting itself in the foot. What services like the late Napster and my current favorite LimeWire provide is FREE MARKET RESEARCH. Has the RIAA thought about paying these services for logs of music swapped by artist, year, genre, etc? It would be a gold mine. Instead of six bands that sound like 3 Doors Down/Nickelback (still can't tell the differnece between those two), we might get some heavy Goth Industrial, or an american release of a foreign album. Also, you could go further and see who swaps music in what region, send less copies of CD's to places where they wouldn't get bought, and adjust advertising accordingly. So with that kind of power coming from 10 different filesharing sources, I wonder why the RIAA is sueing instead of subsidizing. Nobody's going to use an RIAA-developed sharing service, but the RIAA can certainly use publically-available ones. That's just good capitalism.