On Sun, 16 Jun 2002 17:47:48 +0200, Jan Walzer wrote:
> Will there be one ?
> 
> Yes, I know, I /shouldn't/ do things that depend on a Beta(RC) version
> and are important, but nevertheless I did so.
> 
> I had a long animation run for the last weeks, but had to stop
> yesterday. Now, when I wanted to continue, it told me (of course), that
> it has expired, and I'm lost without a running Linuxversion.

Take a look at the thread titled "no more Linux beta?" in the
newsgroup povray.unix.  It looks like the POV-Ray team has some
problems creating the Linux beta and that's why the link to the file
has been removed from the www.povray.org front page.

Unfortunately, it looks like nobody knows when/if RC6 for Linux will
be available.

> I can't neither change the date on the machines, nor am I allowed to
> install the windows version. But there are 10 nifty small machines
> there, idle-state, waiting for something to render ...

I have exactly the same problem.  I have developed a particle system
that depends on some 3.5 features so I haven't been able to work on it
since 10 days because the previous beta does not work anymore.  I do
not want to play stupid tricks with the date on my Linux boxes because
most of them are networked and there could be some problems if the
clocks are not synchronized anymore (especially for remotely mounted
filesystems and for the cron jobs that must run periodically).  I hope
that the next Linux beta (if there is one) will have a much longer
expiration date.

> Is there a way, to get the Linuxversion ?

I suppose that we just have to be patient and hope that the POV-Ray
team solves the problem that they currently have.

Another option is to start working on your own raytracer and release
it under the GPL or a similar license that ensures that nobody will
ever be stuck with a program that has stopped working and that cannot
be fixed because the source code is not available.  Good luck!  ;-)

Some time ago I had offered to help Mark Gordon (who is usually
building the Linux version of POV-Ray) and I proposed to help him
improve the build/install process.  I have a good knowledge of
automake, autoconf and other tools since I am a GIMP developer and I
work on multiple platforms (several versions of Linux and Solaris).
Unfortunately, I never got any reply.  But I suppose that this is
normal since the POV-Ray team does not want to give the source code to
someone they do not know or trust.  So I will wait until the final
release is available before contributing some patches.


-- 
http://www.gamers.org/~quinet/

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