Dears:
Is Linux better than windows, for the optimal render farm? why?
I’ve seen some major studios use Linux.
Regards,
Hi there,
I think one of the main reasons larger studios use Linux is because it’s a lot cheaper, licensing-wise, then setting up a PC farm. That being said, running a Linux OS may require less resources than a PC, which means there are more resources dedicated to the actual rendering process. What software are you planning on rendering with (ie: Maya, Nuke, etc)? Maybe you can ask their support teams if they know which OS works better with their software, as we don’t have those benchmarks here. As an alternative, if you can get your hands on a Linux box and a PC, perhaps you can run your own benchmarking tests, and then make the decision which to use based on your findings.
Cheers,
- Ryan
Depending on the job that is being rendered, I have had some images processed at 1.5x faster on linux than on windows. This was using deadline 3.0SP1 with no gui. I have 16 gb of ram in 5 dual quad core machines all with the same specs. Windows XPSP2 x86_64 runs at about 1gb idle and sometimes gets upwards of 15gb utilization. Linux (gui-less) runs at about 150-200 mg idling. I have not had a job that ran over 12 gb usage for any image, i dont know how to explain that any better. Maybe it outputs the file faster?
Almost every application that we use in our studio runs on linux natively except for photoshop. That is the only reason I keep a few machines on my farm with windows.
I still recommend doing your own benchmarking like ryan said. If you are not familiar with linux, you might need to learn a bit before you accomplish this feat however. I removed many unneeded services from the linux farm machines to achieve these speeds. Windows gives me limited options on service removal.
thanks guys, I really appreciate it.