Why did I switched to Linux ? [ What You Need To Know ! A Game Artist perspective ]
{Important Stuff Below The Picture}
Intro
Hi! I'm T.F, a Game 3D Artist. This is a little guide (explanations) on what do you need to know about Linux for Art & Game Development ! Basically as I grew tired of MS Win10 for different reason's like the poor resource management usage which is awful when you understand how powerful your hardware is actually capable of. As well as the fact that Windows 10 is a Bloated OS which is in not really optimized for performance when it comes down to dealing with highly resource heavy software's ( Heavy 3D files, Data Compression, others... ) Yes, someone can make the point that Windows is more efficient when it comes to gaming performance and I approve that fact. Linux OpenGL drivers still have some way to go. Nonetheless as a developer, I always had better overall performances while using professional software's on a Linux system, where stability was usually way higher.... That being said, I decided to (again) make the switch to Linux. Since I am a game artist, I was always kept back from completely switching to Linux due to the lack of professional software's support ( Or is it really ? ). Let's take a better look at it.
The Software's
As most of the software I currently uses have Linux support ( Substance Suite, Blender, Maya, Unreal Engine 4, <- Now uses Vulkan API by default ). Many other great tools are also supported, like Modo, Houdini, Unity, 3dCoat, Mari.
As for the unsupported ones : Adobe suite, Zbrush, 3DS Max, Fusion 360, Moi3d. C4D, LightWave. Thus it is not completely loss.
First of all, yes I do prefer Adobe Photoshop for photo editing, but it is very rare when I "really" need to use it in my daily workflow. With modern Texturing Suite like the Allegorithmic one, the requirement for the extensive uses of such software is greatly reduced. Keep in mind that a wonderful software called WINE exist which allows you to run certain Windows software's on Linux. Also, Linux have something called Gimp <-Yes I know you know it, and I know that you tried it once or twice and hated it I KNOW ! Just try it with an {Open Mind}. Gimp is very decent at photo editing, and yes it might take you 5 more minutes to complete the task with it but how often you would have to use it ? <- just search for good tutorials and or read the user manual ( which open source is often very good at making ). At the end you can always use WINE. For drawing use KRITA !!!! its just a fantastic software there is no reason to envy Photoshop when it comes to drawing, Krita will truly satisfy all your requirements. If you are into vector stuff give a try to Inkscape. Very ugly by default, but you can apply a dark theme, once you do that it becomes a modern software.
As for Zbrush, since it is mostly a CPU software. It is quite easy to use it with WINE or simply inside a virtual machine ( For Virtual machines I would use a custom stripped down version of Windows7 Ultimate to maximize performance and reduce core Os resource consumption ). Otherwise 3dCoat is available, really good software and quite cheaper alternative. Blender 2.8 also have greatly improved sculpting tools.
Now for the beloved NURBS software's, unfortunately both Fusion360 and Moi3D are not available on Linux. Though, be aware that Moi3D supports MacOSX thus it already uses the OpenGL api required to be able to run natively on Linux. I do think that in a near future the native support will appear once the software is more wildly adopted. Fusion360.... "Loud" : AUTODESK! so no... Fusion uses DirectX api. Nonetheless Wine and Emulation can be used for both of them.
Lastly, the 3D Hammers : 3Ds MAX, C4D, LightWave. Well I don't have much to tell you, every other industry 3d package supports Linux. You might consider it time to upgrade to something else ? Although If you are in visual Design ( peeps who uses C4D to make jaw dropping stuff ) Houdini might satisfy you. If it's modelling aspect is not yet advanced for you, take a look at pairing it with Blender or Maya ( Blender would be good since you add it to your workflow at no cost ). Otherwise Autodesk have started working on ways to compete with Houdini and C4D for visual design in Maya by adding more VFX stuff like procedural modules. Then Maya alone might be enough for you, otherwise -> Houdini.
Now for the OS itself
Yes I do love solving problems, however I also need to get the job done at some point. So choosing an easy Linux distro's ( usually based on Debian ) like ( Linux Mint, MX Linux, Ubuntu ). Can be appealing at first for their greater overall support, however they are only officially supported by few professional software's ( Houdini & UE4 ) <- these two will still run fantastically well on other distro's.
The usual officially supported Linux Distribution will be Red Hat Linux ( RHEL ) as well as it's freely available little brother CentOs. These two are great and probably the most stable Linux available. One main problem with the current versions is their old kernel <- System Core, which is greatly outdated and does have a fairly negative impact on performance. ( Note: RHEL 8 will soon be released (few months) and then will probably be the most appropriate Linux for our specific use. Until that, it is not worth using.
SO !!! that leaves us with FEDORA. Basically Fedora is the Distribution which RHEL is now based on ( Sort of ). It is a stable and highly up to date distribution which gives you high performance as well as a similar environment to the RHEL one <-CentOs is a community version of RHEL.
In short Fedora Gives you an Almost Pain free experience similar to RHEL while still being up to date ( support modern hardware) and is high performance. Since Linux is VERY resource efficient it is possible to Emulate Windows very properly according that your hardware is powerful enough. ( Note: you can also use WINE and its different forks ).
In the case where you have two GPU ( better when they are different models ) you can do something called (KMV GPUPasstrough) which will literally gives you an almost seeming-less Windows emulation with very close to no Performance degradation ( BADASS ).
End note
I hope this post will be helpful and/or interesting to you. If enough persons are interested, I could make a Linux beginner guide for artists to help and guide you trough the installation and setup of your Linux Art_Station.
Cheers.
T.F
Replies
I reaaally wish i wasnt so dependant on windows\google\adobe\autodesk to make a living, but unfortunately i dont see this beeing practicall in reality since most clients i work with need the industry standard programs that arent supported on LINUX
I see this also to be super cool for a hobby\trying to achieve the same at home, kinda like trying to migrate from max to blender slowly and figuring stuff out.
TL;DR : industry standard packages that most of the clients need wont be supported, so if they are fine with the alternatives suggested by OP is a win !
If the quality of open source software is any indication Im going to take a serious look at changing over to linux.
Thanx for the informative topic.
They also usually don't kill something, Microsoft goes to great lengths to preserve backwards compatibility in many areas over the whole OS so that even software written for XP should work on 10 provided it's not doing anything hacky (though things do break often due to bugs). In our In-house software we're still using UI interfaces on Win10 that was deprecated 10 years ago but it's still there. I mean sure you still have to run DOS box to run OG DOOM but come on.
Not sure about Contrast theme but in the latest Win10 the "Dark Mode" toggle in the Personalize > Colours settings now makes the file explorer go dark. It's better looking than the contrast theme but IMO it's still not as polished as it should be so I leave it as light mode for now.
Wacom drivers have always been hit or miss since forever too though
I still wish for the day I could switch to Linux comfortably for my main rig but right now it's still not worth the hassle for me. Basically as long as Windows stays ahead and improves I'll probably never switch unless I'm doing something that absolutely requires it. Lots of VFX houses use Linux as their primary though for the performance improvements mentioned above, honestly I've never really benchmarked it and given the number of driver issues plaguing linux (usually due to lack of prolonged support from 3rd parties) I think moving to Linux for performance reasons is a YMMV situation unless you know what you're doing.
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Great post though! It's good to hear a success story making the switch. I may once again attempt a dual boot sometime but I'd have to clear some room on my already way too cluttered drives haha, also I really don't trust that Windows 10 won't destroy GRUB in an update. @kanga not sure about Wacom but my XP-Pen drivers worked flawlessly on Linux in Blender and Krita last I tried, but there weren't as many optioned compared to the Windows driver. I've seen people at VFX studos using tablets navigating around their Linux distros though so I'm positive it'll be fine.
They did disrupt a lot with Windows Ink. Thankfully my driver (and software) allows me to swap between PenTablet and WInTab if I ever encounter any issues, but hey at least they got rid of Flicks.
I agree it's not too great on Windows, that's why I got Listary. It's basically Spotlight for Windows but with the added functionality of being able to quickly jump to different folders when a File->Open dialog happens. It really winds me up when I use a PC without it, or software implements it's own file browser (looking at you Maya, Houdini and Blender).
I really don't like Mac's horizontal tabs as you open folders, but if they collapsed it so it was more like a tree view I'd like it, also it doesn't have a navigate to Parent Folder button (UP) like Windows/Linux which confused me for a bit. One thing they should do on Windows like they have on Mac though, is let you center taskbar icons, on my ultrawide going to the bottom left all the time is getting tiring and I don't always like to use Win/Alt+Tab.
Regardless, moving to Linux solves some of these problems if you're willing to set it up the way you like and if you don't want to dual boot you can install an X Server into Windows Linux Subsystem and literally run a DE through there.