hi there
im a houdini newbie. few weeks ago i've bought a custom pc. it's p4 with 2gb of ram and quadro xgl 980. i got extra hd and i would like to install linux+houdini apprentice on it. which linux would u recommend? red hat 8? or 7? ive heard that rh9 is not supported…

besides… what about lcd and linux? do they play well together? i have apple cinema display 23" connected to my pc via adc->dvi converter.

thanks for any info.

muhahah.

Hi there,

All RH distributions above 7.2 will run Houdini though you have to set an environment variable for RH9. In addition, for RH 8 & 9, you have to run KDE instead of Metacity(Gnome) due to certain graphics related issues. Please search the forum for related postings.

There are reports by users running Houdini successfully on Mandrake, Debian & Gentoo so you're not limited in your choice of Linux distributions.

With regards to lcd & Linux, it is very much dependent on the graphics drivers. Please check Nvidia's site (there is a Linux forum) for more information.

I hope the above helps!

Cheers!
steven

thanks for the answer.

my friend told me that houdini works best on the red hat 7.3… will see. first i gotta make sure my display will be supported.

thank you once more,
m.

I had the easiest time running Houdini on Mandrake instead of redhat because red hat does not install all the Graphics programs for you right off the bat and also does not allow you to play certain formats like MP3. So if you want to take an mp3 and convert it to another format and say use it in an animation then your Good Luck to you. I also just out flat had an easier time getting houdini running on Mandrake. I did not have to put in a variable setting and I wrote execution scripts that made it easy to launch when I brought over those same standard shell scripts in red hat they did not work and for the life of me I don't know why not. Because I did have csh installed and its just standard shell scripting. I did put in the environment variables. It was weird. Mandrake is also easier to use from a end user stand point if you are not already familar with linux. They have alot of graphical tools that allow to make changes quickly from a graphical interface. Red hat keeps moving files around or changing the way their system works and eleminating programs that you did have to make changes with. I paid for support and they would not tell me how to get my tablet working or my windows hard drive. I did edit all the scripts properly but they have done something more that is keeping it from working perhaps in the kernel or the kernel mod was never installed from the installation and I was not able to choose this one way or the other in that case including doing a custom install. Which I always do. Mind you I am very grounded in linux since I have been on it for like 7 to 8 years. Its my preferred OS.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

P.S. Thats just my 2 cents and change.

thanks for the reply.

so Mandrake you say…

Which version should I download if Im on Intel Platform (P4)?

Sorry to sound so lame but I am a long time Mac user.

i586 ISO?

thanks,
mu… haha!

yeah the i586 works fine for intel and amd.