Is Linux the third runner?

[danilius]

I'm rather curious. Do Linux users represent a substantially smaller Octane user group than either Windows or Mac? If this is the case, should Linux users always expect later releases than those on the other two platforms, or is this a one-off?

[Elvissuperstar007]

Hi all.

First of all thanks for all the great entries and the huge effort you have put into the competition. There is nothing more motivating for developers than awesome work done with the software

As we haven't managed to release a 2.4x build for Linux users yet, we have decided to prolong the competition by another 7 days to the 7.2.2011. This applies to all users. We will now focus 100% on the Linux build first and when that is done we will release pre-beta 2.43 for all platforms as soon as possible. We are shooting for Wednesday, but we can't promise.

I hope, everyone is fine with this last-minute decision. Feel free to continue working on the project(s) you already have posted as finals.

Again, thank you all for your work so far and keep on rendering,

Your Refractive Software Team

[matej]

I'm rather curious. Do Linux users represent a substantially smaller Octane user group than either Windows or Mac? If this is the case, should Linux users always expect later releases than those on the other two platforms, or is this a one-off?

I'm sure that Linux user group is substantially smaller then Windows user group, but I can't say what is the ratio with Mac users. Maybe Referactive could post some percentages - I'm actually quite interested to know this.

I perfectly understand that if Refractive can't do all the builds at the same time, they will make the Win build first. I think this time (2.4) might be an exception - because the previous build updates were made all at the same time.

[danilius]

@Elvissuperstar007: Thanks! I really hope you make it for Wednesday, and I have the time to post a second entry.
@matej: I am simply curious to know if the percentage of Linux users of Octane is out of balance with the usage of Linux in general. Thanks for the info on the builds though.

[thwak]

Linux is typically the red-headed stepchild of most software development. The percentage of users using it is pretty small compared to Windoze and sMac. So we are always last in line.

However, with that said, it also typically means that those other two groups do 95%+ of the bug squashing for us, so we get a pretty clean build whenever it does arrive.

[Jaberwocky]

Linux is typically the red-headed stepchild of most software development. The percentage of users using it is pretty small compared to Windoze and sMac. So we are always last in line.

However, with that said, it also typically means that those other two groups do 95%+ of the bug squashing for us, so we get a pretty clean build whenever it does arrive.

Yes i think you've hit the nail on the head.

Refractive probably wanted the greatest number of eyeballs on and the testing of the software ASAP.I guess whoever was the largest user group was going to get it first to get the fastest testing done.If the biggest user group just happened to be linux then i think they would always have been getting the first shout.

Unfortunalty as the user base worldwide of Windows based machines is the largest , i guess thye odds were stacked in their favour.

[danilius]

I entertained the notion of Linux users being better represented since 3D is far more technical than almost any other graphics discipline, and is one of the few areas where art and coding stray into each other's realms quite naturally. Hence one would expect a higher degree of nerdiness, for want of a better term; and generally speaking nerds and geeks, or nerds who are geeks, tend to find Linux has the sort of tools that makes life a little simpler, in an acknowledgedly more complicated way. Using this supposition, therefore, to postulate a higher representation of Linux users than is commonly found outside geekdom was, in my clearly ill-considered opinion, a distinct possibility. I stand corrected.

[matej]

Actually, I'm almost positive that the percentage of Linux users among Octane users is higher than the percentage of Linux "market Share" in the desktop field, which is very low, something like 2%. I have no data to back this assumption, except a 'gut feeling' derived from the same suppositions (technical field, etc.) as you mentioned, danilius.

EDIT; a simple SQL query would make things clear. Maybe Radiance will find some time to check it

[andi]

Yeah, surely there are more windows than Linux users in general and also what the octane versions depend. Even so the percentage might be higher for a technical software in beta status like octane.
But not only the pure number of users counts for the development, but also the quantity and quality of feedback a software company gets.
And my guess is, that measured by the quality and quantity of feedback per user, the linux users might be quite valuable, cause more often they know their system quite good, they are more used to try out new software especially in beta status and some of them are used to write bug reports.
At least I hope this is true and that refractive does not regret the decision to develop also for a rather small group of people.
Maybe us Linux users can also thank refractive for that decision by writing a lot of quality feedback!

[abstrax]

Hi guys.

I don't know any numbers, but according to Radiance the Linux user group is the smallest and the Windows user group by far the largest. But that's not the reason for the delay of the Linux 2.4 builds. The reason is, that Refractive moved to NZ and had to re-setup the build system for Linux, which is non-trivial. We also switched to CentOS as distribution. -> Consider this as a one-off.

In general, everyone who develops software for Linux knows the main problem of Linux: There is not 1 Linux, but gazillion different versions of it with different libraries, library versions, directory structures and so on. There is also the jungle of different dependencies which is sometimes hard to tame. And sorting all that out, takes time...

Why don't we develop on Linux? Personally, I prefer developing on Windows, as the tools are most mature and the Visual Studio debugger is hard to beat. Also TortoiseSVN, BeyondCompare and VisualAssistX make working on Windows quite effective. And as we do the main development on Windows, builds for Windows are basically always available.

Cheers,
Marcus