Maya and Fedora 18

[Stefan Andersson]

While I love my CentOS installation, I feel there are things that I'm missing out on using a RHEL based distro. So I've had my eye on Fedora, they kind of "failed" on me after FC14. But now looking at it...... hmm..... I feel like I want to give it a shot again. 

Though there are a number of things I've heard. New paradigm for networking, Gnome 3 (how does that one work with Maya). And still difficult to disable the nouveau drivers?

Before I test it, and start to pester Autodesk support I thought I should ask here first :)

best regards

stefan andersson

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Stefan Andersson | Digital Janitor

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[matt estela]

heh, we only just got moved to centos6 about 6 months ago, after years of struggling under centos5. the idea that a vfx house could use a linux distro made after 2004 blows my mind. :)

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[Dillon Bailey]

I have been using CentOS and Fedora for some time now... Fedora 17 on home workstation with no probs. the only hang ups are installing nvidia drivers and using viewport 2.0...

I love it though. And Nuke is fast and nimble :]

[Stefan Andersson]

Centos 6 is actually rather good, stable to the point of boring :)

But for my other needs when I need to test new tools and combine it with a "mixed media" production it's falling behind. 

Everything works right now, except for Krita which requires some newer libs that can't be compiled on Centos unless I turn Centos into a extremely unstable environment. So I figured a could just give FC18 a spin. Still, everything workshops really well and I don't want to mess that up :)

Aaaaah...

Regards

Stefan

-- Sent from a phone booth in purgatory

[matt estela]

Krita is _exactly_ why I got frustrated with centos6!

That said, when I last tried to get that working, I found some interesting discussion on a krita mailing list. A guy from dneg pointed out that with autodesk saying centos6 was the new standard supported Linux distro, it would be great if krita could have a compatible binary that Just Worked. 

I found a beta of the latest krita that did exactly that, sure enough, it worked. Contacted the person who built it, he seemed keen to help, but I didn't follow up. Maybe I'll do that today...

[Deke Kincaid]

Ubuntu/Linux mint and I never looked back.  Setup is considerably easier and easy install of Flash, nvidia, vlc, codecs(prores), chrome, newest firefox which updates every 5 weeks(ugh), etc.. Just stick with 12.04 LTS though since it gives you 5 years support. 

This is my personal opinion though.  My employer still mirrors Adsk and only "officially" supports Centos/Rhel based distributions.

-deke

On Tuesday, April 23, 2013, matt estela wrote:

[Dillon Bailey]

For Ubuntu setup do you just use alien to convert to .DEB files from .RPMs?

[Deke Kincaid]

Yes, Alien handles this quite easily.

[Stefan Andersson]

As I need Softimage to run properly I can't even think about Debian based distros :) But once my conversion to Houdini is done I can take a closer look at Ubuntu and the other debians. But a safer bet for me is to look at the rpm Redhat based distros as it is the preferred platform for most companies and also Autodesk (if you plan to have a chat with support).

I find it quite abusing... sorry... amusing that they (adsk) make a redhat version for Smoke/Flame but can't make another one for the 3D applications. They do some evil hacks to the RHEL that comes with Smoke for the AJA cards, and something else. But it seems to me that it would be quite easy for them to release a proper Autodesk distro since they have 90% of it in place. I'm not sure why they use Redhat at all when they could use CentOS. If they decided to make their own they would have even better control and also what we users could use... but it might also throw us back into the old SGI days :)

Forget everything I've written, I'm just rambling.

regards

stefan

 

[Stefan Andersson]

Just a update, I am now running Fedora 18 and it seems to work well. As usual getting Nvidia to run properly took some time in order to disable nouveau. Also they have this new thing these days called "biosdevname" which isn't compatible with some licensing. So there were a few steps to get everything running as it should. I should also point out that I'm running KDE and not Gnome.

Here are the steps I did after the system was fully updated.

Everything as a super user in a terminal

step 1. Get the network card names back

nano /lib/udev/rules.d/71-biosdevname.rules

uncomment the line
GOTO="netdevicename_end"

step 2. fix the nouveau

mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img
dracut --omit-drivers nouveau /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

Then edit the kernels parameter to skip the nouveau and also the biosdevname. Look for the line
"linux   /vmlinuz-3.8..... etc etc " and the end of that line add:

nouveau.modeset=0 biosdevname=0

nano /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

step 3. reboot system

Download the latest driver from nvidia.com, open up a terminal and type

init 3

this will get you out of X Windows. Log in as root. You can now install the Nvidia drivers. Download the latest driver. In my case I also had to make the file executable.

chmod +x /home/stefan/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-310.44.run

the run the installer

/home/stefan/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-310.44.run

So... it is running. I had some initial problems when I first tried in with a akmod-nvidia installer. So I skipped that and used the method above.

I hope it can help someone else.

regards

stefan

[Dillon Bailey]

So I have installed fedora with KDE and gnome, CentOS with KDE and Gnome, and Ununtu and Kubuntu.

I have never had issues with gnome and wondered why it gets a bad wrap...

Thoughts?

[Dillon Bailey]

Also, do you guys ever use wine for stuff like PTgui or other win32 apps?

[Dillon Bailey]

Also, do you guys ever use wine for stuff like PTgui or other win32 apps?

[Deke Kincaid]

There is a slightly easier tut here using the rpm fusion repository.

http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2013/fedora-18-nvidia-guide/

-deke

On Friday, April 26, 2013, Stefan Andersson wrote:

[Stefan Andersson]

That guide is what I used first, but the performance from the rpm-fusion drivers were really bad.

regards

stefan

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[Stefan Andersson]

I like Gnome2, but the new Gnome3 feels a bit clunky for me. Also I like the KDE filemanager a bit better. But I can work with both, usually I tend to have a script editor open, maya or softimage and a terminal. So the manager doesn't matter all that much to me.

I don't use wine or win32, I have my macbook pro to do all those things.

regards

stefan

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[Deke Kincaid]

My reason is they just don't have enough customizability in gnome.  I always felt from reading the gnome guys posts that they want to give as little of this as possible because they want you to use the WM how they see fit.  Kde has the opposite problem where there are so many prefs I often don't know where to find them.  Still I would rather have too many then not enough.

A good example of this.  All window managers under Linux love to connect alt+left mouse click to move window(no idea why but I hate this functionality).  Using maya and every other content creation app this is a commonly used key combo.  You have to install an obscure preference to change the key from alt to meta/windows but if you want to turn it off completely you have to hack gconf-edit and under some distributions that caused other issues. 

-deke

[Kamil Hepner]

Gnome 3 is completely unusable, unstable and really slow. Which makes it unusable for normal working purpose. Canonical is heading in own direction, ubuntu from version 11.04 start being unstable, they are more focused on "non-linux" users. But the worst thing is that they cause harm for the linux community by denying the GNU/Linux ideology, by putting miscellaneous features like spy software in their distribution. Fortunately behind the fedora is not standing the Canonical, but they heading in the same direction.

There is basically consideration of two distribution like Debian and Centos. Personaliy, I more prefer the Debian, but this is a personal choice. Truly there is no huge difference between that which distribution you choice (Debian has some newer libraries in stable repository, and he is little bit more "painless"). Because you always need to compile everything from the source. Every program use different libraries with different versions, so you need compile everything and manage them very well. Which is not a huge problem. Of course there is a problem with a Krita, because it needs some kde libs. Compiling the whole kde, it's... little bit, time consuming :-) But is possible, you can always contact with the guys from krita, they have more experience with compiling kde. 

What about windows manager, I will stay with gnome2. I wanted to switch long time ago on the fluxbox (In those days there was no yet fbcompose). But Maya for proper working needs composting WM, which is a huge pain (somehow normal programs like Houdini or Nuke doesn't have a problem with that). Installing xcompmgr is pointless.
But the cinnamon looks very nice, it's "continuation" of gnome2. I hoped that debian doesn't switch to gnome3 very soon or they will give you an alternatives.

Have a nice weekend!
Best regards.
Kamil

2013/4/26 Deke Kincaid <dekek...@gmail.com>

[Dillon Bailey]

I haven't had any real issues with gnome3

My setup goes:

sudo yum update
sudo yum install thunderbird pidgin
sudo yum install wine

sudo yum install gcc kernel-headers java-1.7.0-openjdk.x86_64

yum groupinstall "Sound and Video" "Development Tools" "Development Libraries"


##############################################################
Adobe
##############################################################


rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-x86_64-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux


yum install nspluginwrapper.i686 AdobeReader_enu






##############################################################
MAYA
##############################################################


# For Maya 2012

yum install mesa-libGLw libXp gamin audiofile audiofile-devel 
e2fsprogs-libs libstdc++.i686 elfutils-libelf.i686 glibc.i686 httpd 
php ntfs-3g

sudo yum install qtwebkit libpng-compat


yum install xorg-x11-fonts* csh tcsh

yum install libXrender-devel.i686 libXrender.i686 libXrandr.i686 
libXrandr-devel.i686 libXcursor.i686 libXcursor-devel.i686 
libXinerama.i686 libXinerama-devel.i686 libXft.i686 libXft-devel.i686 
libSM.i686 libSM-devel.i686 libXrender-devel.x86_64 libXrender.x86_64 
libXrandr.x86_64 libXrandr-devel.x86_64 libXcursor.x86_64 
libXcursor-devel.x86_64 libXinerama.x86_64 libXinerama-devel.x86_64 
libXft.x86_64 libXft-devel.x86_64 libSM.x86_64 libSM-devel.x86_64



##############################################################
Fix Alt key
##############################################################


dconf-editor
org->gnome->desktop->wm->preferences
mouse-button-modifier <Super>

minimize ['<Shift>z'] 
maximize ['<Shift><Ctrl>z']

-------------------------

Then I go back and download the latest nvidia driver to compile and install.

I add this line to the boot menu:

rghb rdblacklist=nouveau 3

This disables the nouveau driver and runs in telinit 3 (which allows you to compile and setup nvidia display driver)

What other setups do you guys have?

I maninly like RPM based distros like Fedora and CentOS and the only real reason for fedora is that its easier to get things like recordmydesktop, vlc, and wine (though I haven't used CentOS in like 9 months.

[Deke Kincaid]

But the worst thing is that they cause harm for the linux community by denying the GNU/Linux ideology, by putting miscellaneous features like spy software in their distribution. Fortunately behind the fedora is not standing the Canonical, but they heading in the same direction.

I have to completely disagree here.  Making it easy to use Linux is not a crime, it’s a blessing.  I’ve been using linux for 17 years but one thing I loath is the complexity which still exists after all these years.  I used to compile everything from scratch when I was younger and used to love gentoo for this but I’m so over this now.  This GNU ideaology makes Linux puposefully elite and complicated for the sake of everything being free and open (RS doesn’t believe in any commercial software existing).  Nvidia drivers, Flash, codecs, mp3, ntfs-3g, hfs, m$ fonts, Skype, h264, etc… being included and or easily accessible in a distribution is awesome!  I could care less if all of those are anti-GNU. They make my system quickly usable in the real world.  The fact that still in this modern day any Centos based distribution where nouveau is default and I have to jump through hoops to install basic Nvidia drivers is lame.

As for Canonical “spyware” is a little overblown.  Businesses are not charities.  Analytics are very important in business.  Like google, it helps them give you better information when you search helps tune the os.  Also of course it makes them money(just like all the modern web browsers out there like Firefox get paid hundreds of millions for including google or bing as the default search). If you want to turn all the analytics off (spyware as some call it) then it is quite easy to do. Another thought BSD licenses are very anti GNU too, so essentially everything that makes the vfx world tick is anti GNU.  Openexr, Alembic, OCIO, OIIO, Partio, Open Subdivs.  Even QT is very anti GNU since you often need to use the Lgpl version of it and many packages use the commercial version of it.  So we should all go back to crappy Motif :) hah!  

Anyways, please ignore my rant if it offends you. I just became a little pasionate here.  Nothing personal meant or implied here Kamil, just some friendly banter :)

[Kamil Hepner]

LGPL, or BSD is not a really bad license. I have been little bit misunderstood, what I mean about harm which Canonical makes to linux community, is not that they make money, of course you can make money on free software. I'm talking about spy features which they add to ubunt, and turn them ON without warning or informing you - this is really bad. And you should be informed about that, especially if you are convinced that you are using free software (in terms of freedom). I think it's a difficult topic ;-)

I understand that after the previous email I doesn’t look like a guy who wants user friendly linux. But seriously I really want to linux be more accessible and easy to use for people in all ages. But there should be distinguish between two things making linux easy to use and making it slow-eye-candy even unstable (of course when we speak about the freedom, you should have choice between what you want).

It's also be great to be able to install everything from repo, but as you know it's impossible without getting dependencies problems. When I talked about "compiling everthing" I don't mean a Skype, email client or mp3 players. I know and agree with that compiling everything is a very tedious and time-consuming (especially gentoo guys know more about that :-)). And the Krita is great example. Fortunately in many distributions you have it (basically in unstable) repositories, sad is that the centos users will be waiting for it for a long time.
But form company point of view, If you want to install krita on users workstations. You should try to compile it to avoid later problems.

I hope that no one is angry on us for this small offtopic :-)

Best regards
Kamil

2013/5/4 Deke Kincaid <dekek...@gmail.com>