Linux version

I’ve had a similar viewpoint - that broadening the developer palette to several more platforms sounds like a lot of maintenance. But there might be an argument for jumping from ‘one ship to another’ and not going back. Houdini had/has some Linux distros. The way co’s are trying to funnel customers towards a simple interaction with a computer … ‘power users’ will naturally gravitate towards linux/unix.

to cod65 : You sound just like me.

Dang: are you a curmudgeony crank too? God help you :slight_smile:

to cod65: I’m - euphemistically speaking - wincurmudgeony crank only.

May the 4th be with you :) 

+1

… Linux seems to get more popular, since Valve started porting their Games and doing some open source stuff for this :slight_smile:

If TouchDesigner had been available on Linux, we would have adopted it sooner, and would happily abandon Windows.

I can see that casual users find a Windows (or more, Mac) app easier, but are they the main profit driver for derivative?

Bruce

Please do not underestimate the importance of a linux version. I’ve lost multiple days trying to create a stable reproducable production setup on windows. I’ve done this before on linux without any problems. I can literally create an ubuntu boot usb stick, which install a complete kiosk perfectly everytime. I’m not even able to restore a simple windows backup back to a normal working state. Working with windows requires an immense amount of trial and error. It’s absolutely great that we now have a working mac version. Let’s go all the way no and go full cross-platform, because for heavy-duty, reproducable, unittestable production setups: windows mean absolute hell.

Just for clarification: I’m literally begging you to support linux. I’m not willing to continue using touchdesigner if I have to constantly watch my kiosk system break, because windows is simply not made for that purpose. Linux is completely customizable to the point that the window manager runs nothing but touchplayer.

I
am
begging
you

Linux
Please take this seriously.

Totally agree!

I’ll love to have a linux version since i’ve switched to windows just for TouchDesigner!

So please take it seriously!

Many thanks

The Mac version made sense because of the sheer number of Mac users and schools who could jump on more easily, even though I would have personally preferred the focus stay only on Windows. But there aren’t those numbers for Linux users, and I feel like most power users are fine on Windows.

Brutesque - what issues are you having? I have bought and built workstations more times than I can count without any issues.

What are some more in-depth reasons for a Linux version? To me it sounds like a lot of “Linux cause I want it, please.”

Hi Elburz, I’ve also built several workstation and servers to manage 24/7 generative contents and videos and connected to the network for supervising also with IPMI to have full remote control, there are no unmanageable issues, but minor things that are OS related, for example:
-the brutal Win10 update policy, (even in the Pro version you cannot disable all updates)
-…this is also overkill when you have a pay per use connection and several servers download gigs and gigs of updates
-…And that said you need to restart to apply the updates
-USB drivers are not so stable in long term, USB audio devices tend to disconnect sometimes
-virus and ransomware vulnerability, this can be a very showstopper

Linux is the choice for 24/7 server environment since forever, from my point of view since the Derivative guys make a Mac version which is unix based “shouldn’t be” too hard to port into linux :unamused:

Ya I can definitely sympathize with those issues. I’ve found USB audio drivers to be fine in 24hr situations if you use hardware like RME or MOTU who have their own ASIO drivers and we haven’t had any issues with malware in years.

From my point of view though, those are niceties, not deal breakers. What’s a deal breaker for me personally would be slowing down development even by 20% to further support another platform just for niceties.

The question is whether 20% of the time stands for professional technology. IMHO TD is not so cheap to not pay the port, maintenance and support - that is, integration into the pro pipeline of large CGI boys. And we small can not sell any solution on Windows or MacOS too. We are waiting for TD on Linux, as the right technology for business, in an automotive segment, for example.

That’s exactly what I’m saying. I would rather the 20% time be spent making a single platform ultra-reliable, feature-rich, and bug free so that it is more “professional”.

TouchDesigner is quite affordable, especially since you can put an edit license on a dongle for yourself and only sell player licenses to clients.

Do you have a list of issues or examples of why it would be better on Linux? Stefano had a list that I can agree/disagree with.

+1 for Linux version! :ugeek:

I would love a linux version, just because it would allow me to close off one of the reasons that I need to keep windows computers around.

From a user standpoint, I just like the shells of linux and macOS better than windows. They’re more unified and task optimized (for me) than windows, which tends to feel like a shambling mess of every part of windows’ considerable multi-decade legacy overlaid into a weird heterogeneous blob.

All this being the case, I can’t make a practical case for investing time and resources in a linux port. Most of the practical deployment benefits you get from building industrial grade systems on linux are the targeted removal of non-essential system parts, and security hardening. These and other benefits can be achieved just as well by running Touch on something like Windows 10 IoT, which lets you disable alot of the userland bits that could interfere with an unattended system.

As for my antipathy towards windows, I’ve had to get cozy with the fact that if you’re going to be someone who uses computers professionally, you have to accept that you don’t get to use precisely the computers that you want. There’s also the fact that once you’re running your cross-platform application–whether it’s Adobe AE, Touch or whatever–the applications essentially behave the same.

I’d be just as happy to continue to plug away at touch projects on my mac and deploy them on windows boxes.

If I could fullscreen the Touch UI on my Windoze workstation the way I can on my mac, that would probably get me most of the way over my windows antipathy as well, since I wouldn’t be as grumpy about losing screen real-estate to windows’ idiotic title bars and start menu.

Def agree, command prompt and powershell feel cludgy to me compared to bash.

An F11 full-screen mode would be quite cool.

Hi,

I am a mac user for now because lots of installations and visual artists i am dealing with are using mac. But i am a Linux users in the first place.

So i am very happy there is a macOS version now. But i admit it would be priceless to have it under Linux. I am not a coder but i imagine that having a macOS version would ease the port to Linux ?

Graphic stack under Linux could be a problem though and graphics Linux drivers could also…

But I think TD could free some power using pretty good openGL stack under Linux, macOS being stuck in the past and Apple doesn’t really bother taking care of it anyway.

I also like Linux ability to be tailored precisely for any purpose from great perf. server to computer striped down to strictly necessary environnement for autonomous installations where Mac and Windows needs the whole environnement to be run even the un-necessary services and tools.

Lightworks video editing software, Houdini, Nuke, Blackmagic hardware and software like DaVinci Resolve to name a few… already made the move. I hope Derivative will embrace this path one day.

Thanks a lot for this great piece of software.

I like to have mobile apu? version(not just x86) of TD more than linux. Also, Non-Gui version as well.

+1 for Linux

I don’t know anything about the TD codebase, but macOS is built on a fork of BSD, which is a different branch of the POSIX family tree than Linux, which grew out of GNU. They have differently structured kernels and system calls. The gcc toolkit is available on both which streamlines compiling applications on both, but even that requires the availability of dependencies. I wouldn’t care to speculate what sort of crazy dependencies Touch has.

Linux supports pretty awesome graphics. NVIDIA (Derivative’s favourite) has great driver support on Linux, though I think the kernel yells at you for using closed source drivers (non-gpl, taints kernel…). Never tried using CUDA on Linux, but afaik, that’s the preferred platform for most of NVIDIA’s HPC GPU stuff (ie: Machine Learning)

Yeah, I used to think this too, but there are varieties of Windows (IoT now, and ‘Embedded’ before) that are made for creating smaller, more targeted system images. I think that there is some selection bias here. Most of us will probably never use a build of Windows that isn’t in the ‘Pro’ or ‘Server’ family but, other variants do exist. They just don’t get advertised as much. :slight_smile:

Many of these applications didn’t decide to jump ship from macOs and Windows to Linux. The vfx farms of yore used to be built on large networks of SGI/IRIX boxen, and transitioned (mostly to redhat) as SGI began to implode, because they had administrative infrastructure/practices for supporting POSIX type environments.

Touch’s UI seems to run inside an openGL viewport, so I imagine getting that part to run on Linux would be fairly straightforward. Then comes the obnoxious bit. Supporting networking, fs and third party APIs across three platforms would require more testing. This slows down the development of new features, and leads to scenarios where ‘such and such a feature’ is broken on one platform and not another. A developer who is solving these inconsistencies is not adding awesome new fun stuff to Touch instead. :frowning:

We already see bugs tagged for macOs and not Windows. I think folks like elburz dissed the macOs port on another thread a couple years ago because they’d prefer to see Derivative focus all development resources on growing the feature set, rather than solving inconsistencies between platforms.

There are only so many hours in the day.

I would loooooove a Linux port. I’d also like a Tesla, a pet serval, and to live in the Hundertwasser House in Vienna. :slight_smile: