Dreamworks [LWN.net]

Dreamworks

Posted Sep 10, 2007 13:20 UTC (Mon) by HoserHead (subscriber, #828)
Parent article: KS2007: The customer panel

I work in the 3D animation business, so Dreamworks' presentation isn't surprising to me. For those who don't know, it's not just Dreamworks that runs Linux -- it's the entire 3D animation industry. Sony Pictures Imageworks, Digital Domain, Dreamworks, Disney, etc. All large studios run Linux. (And they're the real reason that companies like NVIDIA and AMD have had good, but proprietary, 3D drivers for so long -- there's huge money in the high-end professional market.)

Their apparent lack of technical knowledge isn't surprising, though. Their core competency isn't Linux, it's 3D, and so they spend their R&D budget on that. They don't use Linux because it's Free Software, they use it because it's free software. (Its capabilities help too.) That's a good thing, though -- 3D animation companies are a huge user of Linux, but they're a user of Linux that tends much more towards the "Aunt Mae" than the usual user of Linux.

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Dreamworks

Posted Sep 10, 2007 23:52 UTC (Mon) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]

> They don't use Linux because it's Free Software, they use it because it's free software.

That's an interesting perspective. It didn't initially occur to me that Dreamworks' server farms of thousands of computers would pose an enormous expense just for the operating system licensing alone, had they decided to use a proprietary OS. Not to mention that certain OSes charge license fees based on the number of physical CPUs per server, or by the number of incoming connections (I won't mention any names).

Dreamworks

Posted Sep 12, 2007 1:13 UTC (Wed) by landley (subscriber, #6789) [Link]

There are historical reasons as well. Don't forget that Silicon Graphics
was a Unix shop (VAX through Irix), and SGI discontinued Irix in favor of
Linux at the start of the decade.