Linux questions

[lilrayray77]

I just ordered linux to play around with and I was wondering something. Is there anywqay to trade in My PC version of lightwave and get a linux version? Also how does linux compare to the PC as far as speed go?

[Captain Obvious]

There is no Linux version of Lightwave, unfortunately. But if there was, you wouldn't need to trade anything in. NewTek are nice, and when you buy Lightwave, you get the Mac version and the Windows version.

And your second question does not make sense. "PC" means either personal computer or IBM-PC compatible. The latter is probably the most common usage, but it's just hardware. It's no less a PC just because you run Linux on it. As for the speed, it's about the same in both Linux and Windows.

[lilrayray77]

Yeah sorry, I meant to say, how does linux compare to Windows in terms of stability and useability? Also, Why don't they have a linux version of LW? Anyway, I think I will use linux more for office perposes. What's great t hough, is I found a program that allows you to run both Windows and Linux simotaneously.

[mattclary]

Why don't they have a linux version of LW?

That is the 3million dollar question. Lots of people want it, but my guess is, NewTek feels it would cost more to develop than money it would bring in.

Right now, if you own LightWave for the PC, you can activate a license for the Mac (not to mention XP 64) and vis versa without paying extra. I assume if they ported to Linux, it would work the same. So they would increase their development by 1/3 but probably not bring in NEW customers, just give the code out to old customers.

If that IS what's stopping them, I wish they would consider charging separately for each OS if it meant having more choices.

[Phil]

You can run LW on linux, in discovery mode, using Wine. Note that current versions of Wine have a problem because they changed some of the internal code. This change broke applications that display OpenGL in some parts of their main window (like LW, modo, etc.)

The really depressing thing is that this happened back in January last year, meaning that you will need to use a version of Wine no later than Jan 30 2005 for LW to run properly.

This Wine issue aside, LW runs really well on top of Wine. I'm still hoping that this will eventually be realised by the powers that be; that we will get a Wine-based version of LW on linux (to keep all those lovely Win32 plugins available). The only other issue with this is that Wine cannot support the dongle, so some other means of copy protection would need to be used (and mapped to a pseudo dongle ID for Win32 plugins that use the dongle).

It's not a trivial request, but I'm hoping that we will eventually see something.

Similarly, I'm hoping we will get something like a Darwine support layer for the Intel OSX version. Being able to run Win32 plugins within the OSX version of LW would be very interesting and could make the Mac folks happier *shrug*

[starbase1]

If you want to experiment with Linux, Ubuntu seems very easy, and will boot from a CD.

It can be a little slow, but you might also want to take a look at VM Ware - they have a free Virtual Machine player. This means you can run more than one operating system on your PC at the same time! No need to even boot separately. Various virtual OS's also available from them.

I think this is the most promising route for getting LW going under Linix - if ONE person can get it running under emulation or whatever in a virtual machine, you can then pass that on and it will work for anyone, (I think?)

It also offers some interesting options for power users with a lot of stuff to render - how about running that virtual machine on a high end Unix box like a superdome? There are of course licencing issues for the software, but if lightwave could be made to run in a virtual machine, you could run it on a supercomputer, without separate development, and that would be seriously attractive to the big boys in the industry.

Nick

[lilrayray77]

I have Xandros Linux which is Based on Debian. I am also trying Parallels which is a VM and it is not even loading Xandros. So Maybe I'll try this VMware. Do these virtual Machines slow the guest OS dow at all?

[Phil]

Yep. No hardware acceleration for your OpenGL, etc.