puppeteer

well thats now an option … sure..
but then so is running x86 linux..

but at the end of the day, an Apple machine that isn't running OSX isnt really a Mac at that point..

if running windows or Linux was an acceptable solution then we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place..

yeah, im not going to be unrealistic and expect a true localization..
Just something that runs would be fine..

Real Mac apps are always nice..
But even Apple cant be bothered sometimes.. just look at Shake..
Nuke has also come across with very little real effort made to make it act like a Mac app (menus tethered to a window?)…

but thats fine, ill deal with menus being in wrong place and bizarre fileIO dialogues as long as i don't have to waddle over to another machine..

For sure.. a 3d app forum isn't the place for an OS flame war..
but this is a thread about the pros/cons of porting Houdini to OSX.
We arnt arguing the merits of Houdini, we are arguing OSX vs Linux vs Windows, directly or not..

both your previous posts extol the virtues of Linux over OSX with intentionally provocative phrases like “if you want a real tool to work with”
so i don't think im starting something that wasn't already rolling..

now, in response to your last post.

sure, Safari is just a pretty wrapper around KHTML, so what.. the wrapper is the bit I have to interact with, the pretty wrapper is, at the end of the day, the bit I see. I don't care if I have the equivalent HTML rendering under linux, at the end of the day, for me Safari is more polished to use.

as for mplayer… mplayer is just a player and encoder.. nothing more.. you cant build anything more complex than a shell wrapper around it. Quicktime is a full blow system level API. being able to playback Divx doesn't mean anything to me, being able to use QT reference movies, chapters, metadata, those are things that really matter…
and the biggie.. frame by frame control and scrubbing in (slaps face) both directions..

“Anyone who have tested a well installed maplayer knows that it can play anything”

well tested and installed? why do I want to be testing and installing my media framework, seriously.. its 2006, its a quite reasonable basic expectation that it should work out of the box.

as for a desktop that will embarrass osx.. seriously.. where.. If you can show me one, from even a minor distro maker I love to use it..
show me one that can deal with multiple monitor display configuration without kicking you back to the command line just to install the driver.. and then requiring buggering around in a cryptic X11 config file.. and then after all that. still not giving you the control and flexibility of the monitors control panel under MacOS 6.1…. and Wacoms, dont get me bloody started on Wacoms

Now you could say that these are all things that your tech dept can take care of for you.. but why, these are all tasks that should be basic.. why do I want to chew up valuable tech time on basic shit that should work in the first place..

One could also argue that any potential Houdini user should be able to take any of these niggles in their stride, because .. well because houdini users are hardcore.. and dont need pretty GUIs and stuff and can deal with infinite system configuration, but remember, every hour spent trawling some god forsaken linux answers site to find out why your machine insists on making your CRT primary over your TFT or someother garbage… thats an hour that your not learning more about Houdini, another hour thats spent not doing your real job, another hour working as part of the great worldwide Libré software perpetual beta program..

Now im not saying linux is useless either, I value it as a social movement and as an insurance policy against people like Apple and Microsoft acting like asses.. I just dont want to put up with the day to day crap that using it entails..

therefore I want to be able to use Houdini on a platform that lets me, well.. just use Houdini .. and not have to be a part time unpaid UNIX admin/developer/hacker