After a disk error on my laptop effectively killed Windows XP, I had it in my mind that rather than install Windows XP again I would give Fedora 10 a shot. Of course, I’m no stranger to Linux. One of my secondary computers was usually running it, but as I never used the secondary machine I never really got into Linux as much as I could. So I decided to load Fedora 10 (being the only distro that ever seems to install properly for me on the machines I’ve had in the past) as my main OS – no dual boot or anything like that – just straight Linux. I was hoping this would lead to understanding Linux better because I had to, since I wouldn’t have Windows on the machine as a crutch. I must say that the past few days has accomplished that very task, as I am becoming more and more efficent in using Linux, and being able to use it for the tasks I want.

Now I won’t be proclaiming that everyone should abandon Windows in favor of Linux as I have always stated that as long as the machine is doing what you want you should continue to use it happily. But I will say that it is enjoyable and much more easy to use than I remember from past iterations. If you ever do switch here’s some things to keep in mind (which is valid as I write this, who knows what will happen down the road):

1. Fedora 10 32-bit live cd doesn’t have the samba client pre-installed (easy to add though).
2. Lots of applications that support Linux seem to be available only in 32-bit (Google Gears) but there seems to be a slow push towards adding 64-bit support for some apps (e.g. Flash support for Linux 64-bit just went alpha).

Of course I installed Houdini and for the sake of saving others some searching, here are some things that I did in Feora 10 that got it installed:

1. Get the video card driver for your machine. Sure there is the default driver loaded on your machine but for me at least I needed to the full monty.  For Fedora, I used the ATI rpm as per the instructions here (NVIDIA instructions found here). For the ATI portion be advised that after using the init 3 command you’ll leave the GUI, so be sure to have the rest of the commands written down somewhere.
2. Install Houdini by unpaking the gcc 4.1 build of Houdini and in a terminal going to the Houdini install folder and typing ./houdini_install as root, then follow the instructions. I didn’t seem to need to do add the “source houdini_setup” line anywhere for Houdini to run.
3. If you’re running SELinux, set the default to permissive and when you run Houdini for the first time, quite any SELinux warnings (so you don’t see them pop up again everytime you open Houdini.

P.S. I fixed Windows on the laptop by running chkdsk, but decided to install Linux anyway.

P.S.S. My main desktop machine is still running 64-bit Vista.

1. odforceuser42 Says:
   March 4th, 2009 at 4:11 pm

   thanks for sharing this. it is helpful.

   a few questions:

   you mentioned you preferred Fedora because it would install… totally understandable ( i’ve relegated my linux forays to live cd’s only ), but how does it play w/ the apps you like? in regard to Houdini, is it supported by sidefx? even if it isn’t, have you ever come across a “uhhh, what just happened?” moment?

   also, is this the 32 bit version of fedora? why not go w/ the 64 bit? can you still install and run 32 bit apps on 64 bit linux?

   when will you be writing up your experiences w/ the “sony cell linux distro”? ;o)

   how about MythTV? any desire to make an OTA DVR?

   will you be looking into tinkering w/ development on the linux platform?

   if you can load “wine,” and you’ve already stated you can find equivalent apps for most of what you do, what would you say is holding you back from making a full on switch to linux? this isn’t meant to start a flame war or anything. just curiosity. if we get a pc with windows preinstalled and it works, why switch to something else that also works? unless there is a benefit. and repeating, if the experience of installing the latter is painful, why why why??? go thru the pain?

   peace & 42

2. geneome Says:
   March 5th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

   Fedora seems to do just fine with the applications I’ve installed so far, but admittedly the only two apps I’ve installed is Google Gears and Houdini. Everything else is from a fedora package repository so I know everything works with it (e.g. OpenOffice). Houdini does support Fedora in that I use the Ubuntu gcc4.1 build. No, it doesn’t say Fedora outright, but Fedora understands builds that used gcc4.1 to compile, ergo it is supported in a way. Never had any issues, though one thing I noticed is a bit of a flicker when navigating in the scene view. I think that’s an ATI hardware (read: old hardware) and driver issue though.

   I didn’t go with the 64-bit for two reasons 1) Some non-Fedora-package apps don’t support 64-bit Linux yet and 2) My laptop doesn’t have a 64 bit chip I suppose the latter is the biggest one. You can’t install 32 bit apps on a 64-bit Linux because it uses the LP64 standard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit#64-bit_data_models). Windows uses the LLP64 model so it can run both 32 and 64-bit apps on a 64-bit machine since it differentiates between a long and long long type (long = 32 bit, long long = 64 bit), whereas Linux doesn’t (it’s all 32 or all 64 bit).

   Don’t have a cell chip so I suppose I can’t use the distro

   I actually thought about MythTV a few years back, but then I got a TIVO since it just worked out of the box. I didn’t want to have to constantly maintain the thing.

   Right now I don’t think I’ll get into development since I would rather focus on 3D!

   Why use Linux when you have a perfectly good OS on your machine is a tough question. As of right now I don’t see any benefit or deficiency with the exception of some applications being for Windows only (enter Wine). As for making the full switch on all my machines, I don’t think I can make that leap simply because the world runs on Windows, and I need to keep knowing Windows and being able to use all that is made for it. But as to why I went with Linux in the first place, I wanted to understand a Unix based system to increase my understanding of other computing environments. Who knows, it might help down the road.

3. bleh Says:
   April 13th, 2009 at 4:36 pm

   yeah, when i switched from XP 32bit and windows 7 64bit to Ubuntu 8.10 the difference was amazing

   faster sims, viewport can handle more without slowdown, hell, Houdini even loads up like 30 seconds faster on linux…

   Anyone using Houdini on Windows (xp, vista, windows 7, 32bit, or 64 bit), do yourself a favor and install linux! it might take u a day to get everything setup as you learn how to use it, but once you do, you wont regret it. The prog not even loads faster, but my render and simulation times have decreased significantly

   I made a benchmark sim file, and Windows 7 was faster than my XP (because it is 64bit and XP cant use all my ram – on sims that didnt max ram usage, the times were identical)

   Ubuntu however completely decimated the times set by windows 7 and xp, regardless of ram usage. There was simply no comparison. It also runs significantly more stable than on windows.