Comment by jfaucett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jfaucett | Hacker News Reader

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I think you're probably right about most media production being done on osx, but I'd still love to have something comparable on linux, since you're not blocked by apple decisions as to what you can or not access (no apt-get for instance) also with linux you get open source, better terminals/tools, and more software/lib packages.

Projects like Blender are amazing and others mentioned by the author are really almost replacements for Adobe, i really like GIMP's scheme scripting language for example which allows more flexability than proprietary adobe plugins. So I'd personally be really exited if GNOME started going in this direction.

Imagine for a second, linux with high quality media content creation tools, there's huge holes especially in video (nothing near comparable to After Effects or Final Cut Pro - forget ffmpeg for that )

Also as for myself I do all my development on Ubuntu / Debian while switching to windows for testing out on that platform (IE for example), but I only do browser/networking stuff.

Anyway, I like where he wants to go, and would love to see GNOME head in the direction...

Erm, I don't understand where this impression there's no high quality media content creation tools available for Linux is coming from...

I guess it depends what segment of the market you're looking at: 80% of the large VFX houses in the world use Linux to do the modelling, texturing, animation, lighting, rendering, compositing, using programs like: Maya, Mari, Mudbox, SoftImage, Houdini, Katana, PRMan, Arnold, Nuke.

All those high-end apps that are used everyday to create feature films (and tv shows and adverts) work on Linux.

sorry, I should've been more specific... I meant linux in the sense that they're open source. The only contender in my book for high end open source media creation tools is really Blender which can hang with the Max/Maya lot. Also Linux tends to be used almost purely for the processing side, ie render farms, for film, 3d, etc. The designers and content creators themselves are rarely on linux though.

As I said in my post, 80% of the big VFX studios like DD, Weta, SPI, ILM, Dreamworks, DNeg, Framestore, MPC, FuelFX, RSP are using Linux for everything. Not just renderfarms - everything - creating the original content, modelling, texturing, lookdev, etc, etc.

So I don't know where you're getting the "Also Linux tends to be used almost purely for the processing side" from.

Everything you've said is true, but it's a relatively small industry, very custom (where linux shines), and little overlap with others.

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