On Tue, 25 May 2004 18:29:37 +0200, Stefan Viljoen <rylan@<deletehis>  
wrote:
> I was just wondering which operating system(s) you use in concocting your
> traces?

Currently WinXP on the big machine, and Win98 on a smaller one.



> It seems that Windows has nicer programs (Moray for example) for  
> designing
> scenes, but is not so hot on high-demand traces (big operating system
> memory/cpu time footprint - you cannot "switch off" the GUI). In
> comparison, Linux seems to offer more CPU cycles (run it in text mode for
> tracing, kill processes you don't need) and more stability (I've seen  
> Linux
> systems stay up for weeks under a heavy PovRay load).

Windows (especially XP) does have a hefty memory footprint, but during a  
memory-intensive POV-trace most of it can (and will) be paged out; some of  
it gets dropped altogether, e.g. GUI resources.
As for CPU footprint, I haven't seen any system where the GUI is  
inherently demanding when you're not actively using it. If you've got a  
lot of crap running in the background, that might slow things down a  
little, but the GUI itself should not be a problem. Also, nothing prevents  
you from killing unneeded processes in Windows; very few processes are  
actually needed if all you're gonna run is POV-Ray.

Another issue you did not address:
Which system has the faster POV-Ray executable? They are, after all,  
compiled with different tools. I vaguely recall some old posts somewhere  
claiming that the Windows version was noticeably faster than its Linux  
counterpart. Can anyone confirm or deny this? It seems reasonable that the  
Windows version would get an advantage from using the Intel compiler, but  
the world doesn't always work reasonably. Unfortunately, I am not  
currently in a position where I could test this. Anyone out there with a  
WinXP/Linux dual-OS setup?

Note that I'm not in any way advocating Windows over Linux; I'm just  
saying that Windows isn't nearly as bad as some people claim.



> What do you use? It seems to me the best combination is design in  
> Windows,
> final render in Linux. Anybody else do it this way? Do most guys who use
> UNIX/Linux for design and final rendering use an editor only to design,  
> or
> which modelling programs do you prefer on UNIX/Linux for PovRay?

I think that many people develop (model, run test-renders etc.) on their  
primary machine, and then run the final render on some other machine. The  
OSes used are not really important; what matters is that the other machine  
can be left undisturbed for the duration of the render.
Another approach is to simply run a render at low priority in the  
background on your primary machine. Appropriate if the primary machine is  
much faster than any others you have (and assuming the render-time matters  
to you), or if you only have one machine.
I've used both approaches myself. My primary machine is several times  
faster than the other one, but the fans are so loud that I can't have it  
running overnight.



> I've had frequent problems using PovRay 3.5 under Win98SE and have  
> regularly
> left an overnight trace running only to check in the morning and find  
> that
> Windows had crashed. Are the newer Windows operating systems more stable
> for POV?

Newer versions of Windows are more stable in general than older ones  
(possibly excluding WinMe). XP in particular is pretty solid, unless you  
have faulty hardware drivers. More importantly, however, is the fact that  
newer versions have support for newer processor instructions, giving  
better performance to POV-Ray on modern hardware.

I should perhaps mention that I've left POV-Ray running for days under  
Win98 several times without incident. Properly configured and maintained,  
Win98 is pretty stable, especially if all you're doing is running POV-Ray.


-- 
FE

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