FreeBSD used to generate Matrix effects

chris sent in a link to this story which reports on FreeBSD being used on 32 dual-processor machines to render special effects for The Matrix. With 32 dual-processor machines, I doubt there's much that they couldn't render.

*BSD in trouble?

Here's a question for the some posters out there.

Occasionally I see someone post that *BSD is "in trouble" and will disappear sometime in the near future as other OSes take "market share."

Why do people make such claims? Is there any really strong evidence to support this? Please explain why *BSD is "in trouble."

Keep in mind that having little market share doesn't mean it will die. Imagine linux in .01 days, before all the commercial support. It still survived. And OpenBSD and NetBSD seem to be still alive, although they seem to be less popular than FreeBSD. Also, FreeBSD does have commercial users, and a more flexible license for businesses.
Aside from the often quoted examples of Yahoo! and Walnut Creek, there is a list of some others at the FreeBSD Gallery [freebsd.org]. And of course, this is not a complete list.

Please, just use the OS you like for the job you want to do, and don't pray for the death of excellent operating systems (OSes from unscrupulous companies like M$, bash all you want).

Suddenly I Understand....

"was truly an amazing effort on everyone's part, and I don't believe it would've been possible had we chosen to go with any other Operating System solution."

*SMACK*, suddenly, I understand EXACTLY what FreeBSD users feel like when they read about Linux in the news....

This is impressive, and, they deserve the credit, both the Manex Visual Effects and FreeBSD. If I might add, SGI deserves historic credit for pioneering this stuff (hope they can make a comeback to the way I remember them with thier new Linux/Intel project, and porting OpenGL, etc...)

Dell, well, uh... Dell did deliver the boxes speedy, I guess :-)

Linux software on freebsd

If i'm nost mistaken the rendering software used was linux based and thus emulated on the freebsd machine.

Correct. Renderman.

Doing so was just cause the main person in charge was a hardcore freebsd guy and didnt really like going linux.

Charles Henrich uses FreeBSD in preference to Linux. He's contributed code/docs to the project, but he doesn't have commit access. This is a somewhat strange definition of "hardcore freebsd guy" you seem to be using.

They did sacrifice a lot of preformance due to that (refering to an older /. article on this subject). Also, that article went on to state that if they had freebsd based tools it would have done a better job.

False. A cite/URL for this /. article would be appreciated so I can respond to its FUD. If you don't have one, please don't bother repeating these allegations, because they're false.

And to others who've pointed it out; the description on this /. post is deceptive -- it's not a story about the Matrix, it's a Press Release (the words "Press Release" in the title of the web page and in the heading should have been a tip off to the more alert amongst you). This is why it's light on technical details. A more detailed story will hopefully be forthcoming for DaemonNews.

N
[e-mail]

Ok this is pathetic...

What the hell has happenned to slashdot, this used to be an INFORMED forum. These days is nothing more than a bunch of kiddies arguing how linux is superior over something they HAVE NEVER USED.



DISCLAMER

( sorry if this offends the people that do not fit in the description above, i know there's a great deal of very smart and knowledgeable people still left here in slashdot and i hope that number grows
because we need you)


On the comparison of "LINUX" Vs " FreeBSD" you are all pretty wrong, FreeBSD is both a Distribution AND a kernel, not one like linux. if you want to compare distributions then go ahead, compare Redhat 5.2 versus fBSD 3.1-RELEASE.

The fact of the matter is that Linux distributions are for the most part ( with the exception of Debian all the way ) still bleeding edge and not the most stable systems without a GREAT deal of tweaking. As you can see from FBSD, this is way different as there are three current distributions
aimed at different purposes. ( -RELEASE , -CURRENT, and --STABLE )

Say all you may, but my experience with both a customized redhat with the 2.2.x kernell versus a 3.1 -RELEASE has shown me that FreeBSD still handles networking load quite better than a normall linux distribution. How can i tell this...
well, from about 25 hsoting servers that i administer. a great deal of them started as Linux boxes but, we only needed to test one freeBSD machine with the load of TWO linux boxes and we were converts.

as for the linux emulation in freeBSD....
first, is not "emulation " persay, is much more closer to what wine does, which is binary compability. To this day linux threads still perform better in FreeBSD. Of course some things are a bit slower, but , hey, this are things that were not originally aimed at freeBSD, is a god damn good show at the prowness of FreeBSD programmers.

I love linux, i use it a smy personal workstation at both home and work, but there's no question in my mind that in terms of squeezing that last drop of performance out of a x86 machine, fBSD does it much better than linux. Not only is the kernel more mature, but, even linux zealou shave to agree with this, linux distributions to date just plain suck ( for lack of a better word).
I mean, when was the last time you used a system as clean as the ports collection ... when was the last time you TOTTALY rebuilt all the programs in your system quite flawlessly with one command.

Linux has a lot of promise, but , FreeBSD still handles load better, because it is a kernel totally tuned for the x86 arch.