What will it take to get derivative to make TD for linux?

+1. Derivative is working Vulkan support right now --the way I see it they should finish that first, then add Linux support (with or without “legacy” openGL.) cheers.

same, and my life has improved as a result. If it weren’t for touchdesigner I’d essentially never need to boot a windows box.

Agreed on at least just building for ubuntu. There are people that would take issue with that for valid reasons, but it’s a start and I think the community at large would have an easy time adopting ubuntu without much fuss. Imagine eventually being able to have a community linux distro that has been trimmed and tuned for touchdesigner media servers and just works. We’ve got an incredible talent pool whose efforts in that area would be well utilized.

But thats why my post originally asks, what would it take? Maybe if enough support hours get pooled we can just get it that way :laughing:

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Definitely a +1 as well, even though I guess it’s quite a “feature request”
Would be amazing to be able to control your patches remotely with a command line interface :slight_smile:

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That sounds like a separate second RFE? Not sure how it would look, but you could prototype it now using scripts that communicate with OSC or UDP In DATs. Ha, we have certainly come full circle when people are asking to throw away the UI and give them a command line again :laughing:

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Hi,

I must say i agree with everything said here.
Linux could be such a nice platform for Touchdesigner projects : stability, efficiency, customisation, choice of hardware…

I work with artists on museum installations and concerts : Windows is powerful but unpredictable and bloated with lots of unnecessary apps and services. I am just having right now a Windows PC running TD for a video installation for 3 months. This installation has been running ok for 2 months but 2 weeks ago the video started to randomly stuttering.
it turns out that even if I turned off all updates, I found updates from a week in the history and i come to tell me that it is not foreign to my recent issues. Mac is used a lot but hell, performance and customisation is really becoming a pain (and expensive !)…

I used to work in the film industry and i must say you can see Linux everywhere in the pipelines ! from vfx software to (3D, compositing) to post processing (editing, grading…) and even workflow tools

I am no coder so i can’t tell what would it take to get the port right, but seeing others have already ported their tools to this platform i assume there is a way !

So yes, you have my vote for a Linux port !

haha I read my post again and indeed it sound ridiculous :smiley:. Definitely didn’t mean to throw away the UI, more like to be able to login into a remote machine and fetch/control it quickly (instead of having to use teamviewer or something).
Sure this can work with an own build OSC control system, but that’s something different in my opinion. (What if you want to update that OSC control system remotely?)

But besides that, definitely great for stability and use in small machines.

+1 here’s hoping with patience and optimism. :slight_smile:

it must be pretty frustrating for derivative to have worked to put together the resources to provide and support a macOs port, only to have apple decide that making phones matters more than computers.

interdisciplinary media programmers generally need to keep PCs around to support platforms like d3 and notch but, it would be amazing to use linux as a custom solutions deployment OS.

linux is such a community-centric OS. it would be fun to see the TD community work together to crowd create solutions like usb-bootable OS images that are optimized for TD.

+1
As a Houdini user, I hope

… for over 18 years?

+1
Would be awesome to run TD on low power devices like Nvidia Jetson Nano!

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I would like a Linux port, plus other enhancements necessary for rendering to be done remotely in the cloud; the intention would be for remote devices like phones and tablets to be used as the UX surfaces. Multiuser capability would not be required if unique instances could be assigned per user.

One more +1 support for a linux port.

Another +1 for a linux port.

+1 for a Linux port, as a long time Linux user I’ve ever suffered the dual boot syndrome.
I’ve started making music and digital art on Debian and I frankly can’t wait to get rid of W10 foverer without missing my fav commercial software.

To rephrase the OP message “What will it take to get derivative to acknowledge this thread?”

Firstly, TD is a fantastic product I’m falling in love with! It’s convinced my to get my first windows laptop since giving up M$ on win 95… Got 10x the GPU power of my macbook pro (which I only had because of BSD unix underneath and frustrations with linux lappy support in the past) for far less money than a Mac replacement, but has reminded me why I left windows (stability, lockups, inane reboots, system updates, poor scheduling, poor task management and transparency, wildly fluctuating CPU usage at idle etc etc etc), and why the OS isn’t really suitable for TD. Particularly for leaving running on site for say an art project.

To make the point -

  • TD needs hefty GPU power… OSX makes that a major rip off and drastically limited choices
  • TD needs reliable OS with low, predictable overheads, and a good scheduler (that’s windows out…)
  • Embedded/on site stuff ideally would require repeatable, custom headless builds with stripped down OS’s, remote management, full command line control of the hardware subsystem etc, and that can run stable without memory leaks indefinitely (i.e. OSX nope, Win nope, Linux hell yeah)
  • Solid, best of breed python support (umm, linux…)

Perhaps Derivative could consider open sourcing some low level part of TD so that hackers could help solve this for them? Or at least engage here and help us understand what the issue is? (nvidia drivers maybe?)

So another +1 for linux, and looking forward to seeing more than just people explaining why we need it here. I think if it’s doable, it’s very much win/win for TD, and if it’s not, I’d love to know why not so I can let it go if I really need to.

Thanks,

Craig

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Besides stability another argument in favour of Linux is performance as well as compatibility with the vast majority of vfx pipelines.
Coming from Houdini on a dual boot system my simulations and GPU renders are routinely anywhere from 15 to 30 % faster on the exact same hardware. Something to do with faster memory addressing I think.

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+1 would appreciate linux version as well, hope it helps to name it here … i wouldnt buy one way macbooks where its not possible to change ssd or battery (actually im fine with HP zbook) and even if the new macpro seems to be beautiful designed - i got more power for a third of the price with threadripper (and i would generally pay a bit more for the apple tax - but not 3 times more for less power for sure …
only disadvantage is windows which is ugly and sucks - Linux is soo good nowadays, even easier to install than windows - please make a linux derrivate !
Larissa*

+1 for Linux. The rest of our dev team uses Ubuntu by default and it’s often difficult to get buy-in to set up a windows machine for any permanent install. Windows might make sense for performance or one-off situations, but for permanent installs Linux is the better option. Especially with things like nvidia-docker, it makes it much easier for us to push changes and manage TD projects the same way that we manage all of our other software.

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Oww yes… +1
A version for Linux would be a dream come true

Would be amazing if they add Linux Support.
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+1 For native Linux support. It wouldn’t be a trivial port but it would certainly be an easier port than going from Windows to MacOS. With Linux being a Unix system like MacOS under the hood, some of the work was already done when they ported to MacOS.

I would buy TouchDesigner (upgrade from my non-commercial license) if there was a Linux version. Right now, it’s not worth it for me and TouchDesigner can’t be my main tool because it isn’t on Linux.