Almost like the power company you either take whatever crap they give you or you're left out in the cold.  Linux and Mac are looking better and better.

Quote - What about a dual boot with XP X64 on one partition and Linux on the other? Would that work?

It should work fine.
I have a PC with 32 bit XP and 32 bit Linux on separate physical disks in a dual boot and haven't had any problems I'm aware of yet.
Putting them on separate partitions on the same physical disk shouldn't cause problems, but I'd do some more checking into it first before doing that on my main machine.

Quote - What about a dual boot with XP X64 on one partition and Linux on the other? Would that work?

That was the solution I finally came too - I tried out a few different linux distro's using Virtual Box first, just to see which would suit my needs best, finally decided on Ubuntu 64 Desktop.

I'm a long time debian fan, but debian is pretty conservative with there update cycle and I wanted some of the newer bells and whistles.  Also, to do a dual boot with debian required that I setup a partition for it first, then install, whereas Ubuntu's partitioner made it falling off a log easy to repartition the drive and shrink the windows partition down a bit to make room for Ubuntu.  It wanted a lot more of the partition by default than I actually gave it, but 20 gig seemed sufficient for my needs to start with since I'm using it primarly for software development atm, provided I can get FAST going the way I'd like eventually I'll be able to remove windows from my system all together, but for now a small linux partition seemed like the way to go.

I was also fairly impressed that ubuntu found and allowed me to install the drivers for my Nvidia card with very little fuss, something most other Linux distro's do not do because the cards drivers are not "free" software and as such are treated, well honestly with a sort of mild distain by many in the Linux community and many of those that maintain distro's. 

But Ubuntu made it pretty easy to install everything and get it up and running, I really like it's package management system (it's debian based), no hassles with library versions like you so often run into with RPM style packages.

But I would recommend you download virtual box and install the 32 bit desktop of Ubuntu first, play with it a bit and see if it's your cup of tea before going the dual boot route.  Linux is a lot like Moutain Dew - there are a ton of flavors available and not everyone drinks the same thing.  Personally I'm a big fan of regular old MD - whereas my daughter prefers a flavor called "livewire", which tastes a lot like carbonated Tang to me (in other words, ick!).

So my best recommondation is to install virtual box and check out a few distros, the most popular and best supported are probably Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and of course Debian.  That way you can create some virtual harddrives, see what you like and which of the distro's you think will best suit your needs.  Once your done just uninstall Virtual box and delete the virtual drives (they will show up as files under windows that you can easily delete with windows explorer) and then install your distro of preference as a dual boot.

Quote - Have no desire to run Vista myself, in fact once I get a bit further along I'm hoping to be able to dump windows on my primary machine entirely.  I'm currently running Win XP Pro x64 only because I have to to run Poser properly.

I've tried Poser running under wine on various Linux boxes and just can't get a satisfactory result, however once I get a bit further along with the open source replacement I'm working on I'm hoping to be able to dump windows entirely and switch over to Linux on my primary machine.

I like a lot of windows apps, but as for the OS itself, never really been much of a fan.  Way to much of a resource pig for what it does.

I am currently running Poser 7 in Ubuntu 8.04 / Wine 1.0. It's not as smooth or quick as in WindowsXP, but the upside is that now I never get the "Poser has generated a critical error and must be shut down" screen either, so I can actually finish what I started. Still, I do dual-boot WinXP and Linux for those occasional apps which are getting less and less.

From what I've seen of Vista, it's not very intuitive, especially for those coming from XP. Why would Microsoft painstakingly "train" a user-base to do things one way for years and years, then arbitrarily simply change how things work, confusing everyone, affecting productivity... what a mess! Office is a case in point. OpenOffice.org acts more like the Office we know and love: who wants to change just for the sake of changing?

I will never buy Vista. I have ethical and philosophical reasons, but mostly, financial reasons. Costs too bloody much!

Quote - > Quote -

The only drawback of not running WIndows natively on my machine is having to fire up a virtual machine for Poser, because Wine apparently can't handle its various quirks.

For me Poser 7 works under Wine quite fast and reliably. However, I spent a lot of time tweaking it about, but it does work. I have a virtual machine with a stripped down XP which I intended to use Poser in, but so far Poser runs very nicely under Wine after I resolved some issues. Just to say that it IS possible to get it running under Wine. And it's much faster in Linux than it never was in Windows under the exact same hardware I have.

Which version of Wine do you have? And can you describe what you've done to make it run better? I've still got a few issues with it, like when you select the head, for instance, the red outline stays on the features even when you mouse away from the preview window, making it more difficult to do fine control of ...say... the eyes.
Cheers, mate...

Quote - Well I'm through fighting with this OS I'm going to XP X64.  I just dont have the time or patience to redesign the whole OS to work, truthfully I'm plain disgusted with it.  If I could I'd go back to Win 98.  Someone mentioned Linux? Will Linux run Max, Zbrush and Poser? I am totally ready to give up on microsoft forever if I can find an alternative.  I have an old linux slackware I think or something like that, I think I have redhat too, theyre probably too old for this though.. I,m running a new Dell XPS core2 quad Q6600, and I especially want my Wacom intous 3 graphics tablet to work. How about linux/ Can it do what I want?

My personal experience with tablets and OSs was using a Wacom Bamboo in the GIMP. Would not work in Windows. Still doesn't. Works a treat in Linux (Ubuntu 8.04) and the GIMP.

For Windows users who don't want a massive OS learning curve but just wanna get to work doing what they need to be doing, may  i recommend Ubuntu 8.04? Easy, quick and free. Unbeatable combination.

Quote -
Which version of Wine do you have? And can you describe what you've done to make it run better? I've still got a few issues with it, like when you select the head, for instance, the red outline stays on the features even when you mouse away from the preview window, making it more difficult to do fine control of ...say... the eyes.
Cheers, mate...

Most recent Wine version (1.0) with Ubuntu 8.04 and NVidia restricted graphics drivers.
In an earlier post in this thread I posted some few things I had to do to get it working.

That red selection marquee is really one of the things I was not yet able to resolve. However it's only a minor nuisance for me since a quick click on the camera roll-ball (or whatever it's official name is) makes the selection marquee go away until re-selected.

My experiences so far are very good with Poser/Wine after the initial fuss. I've also spent quite some time with it now and had a total of 0 crashes so far (something that wasn't the case in Windows). Python scripts and rendering speeds are faster than in Windows XP and posing for polygon-heavy models is about the same speed as in WinXP. Hierarchy window works much slower for me than in WinXP though. Poser Startup time is WAY faster with my 50Gb single Runtime ... probably due to Linux having superior disk file systems than Windows has (I'm running Poser on an ext3 file system). The good thing is that Wine is under heavy development so Poser will most likely ran better and better with each new version.

Lots of great advice here, I will try them out as you say.  Thanks.  Where is Penguinisto? It seems to me I remember he had Poser running well under linux too.  An older thread I will go back and look for it see if he gave any specifics.

To the OP:

I found your post interesting. I have had Vista for about two months now and from day one I never had a problem with it. My system is very similar to yours yet my experience has been totally different. That's what is so odd about Vista. Some people have no problems, others live in Hell from the moment it is installed.

Poser runs great and very fast for me as do my other programs. I would never go back to XP.

So those that are considering Vista, I recommend it but remember I don't know which group you will fall into. :)

I have heard some people have had great experience with Vista. I'm one of those in hell, LOL,  Must have been a bad boy in my prior XP life :)  To click buttons in my apps I actually have to click somewhere above and to the left of the button to hit the spot. Insanity!

Quote - To the OP:

I found your post interesting. I have had Vista for about two months now and from day one I never had a problem with it. My system is very similar to yours yet my experience has been totally different. That's what is so odd about Vista. Some people have no problems, others live in Hell from the moment it is installed.

Poser runs great and very fast for me as do my other programs. I would never go back to XP.

So those that are considering Vista, I recommend it but remember I don't know which group you will fall into. :)

Well, Vista, Like most microsoft operating system releases in the past, is coded for the top 10% of hardware available.  They design the OS for the high end hardware, which is generally "mid range" hardware by the time the OS comes out, but the older hardware is often left out in the cold as a result.

The upside to a new OS from microsoft is generally device drivers and compatibility with a wider range of peripherals and add on hardware, the downside is that anything in your system that is "substandard" as far as the OS is concerned will cause the OS to get flaky, cause problems, or just plain crash.

It's been a pretty common problem with most new Microsoft OS releases, and the reason why I generally don't even consider upgrading to any new Microsoft OS for home use until at least the second service pack, to give them time to work out a lot of the bugs and get a lot of the stuff they missed prior to release fixed.

From what I've read believe it or not Vista does not seem to be as not as problem prone on the newer hardware as past releases of Windows have been.  Windows XP, which is now a nice, stable OS, was pretty buggy and problem prone when it was first released too - this is just something I've come to expect from Microsoft, I consider any of there first releases to be "wide area beta" and plan accordingly.

So while I might at some point consider switching to Vista, it probably won't happen any time soon, and with any luck it will become a moot point for me before it becomes necessary to upgrade.  I do about 80% of my work in Linux now anyway, the only reason I still have XP on the drive is for some of the higher end 3d apps I run at home that don't have a Linux equivalent.

And yes, for those who will inevitably jump all over that last statment as a chance to talk about blender, I'm well aware of Blender, but it has three major downfalls:

1. The interface is terrible, cryptic and difficult
2. It would require a ton of jumping through hoops to convert all of my current 3d projects to a workable format for blender
3. Did I mention the interface sucks?

But with a bit of luck and coding I hope to be able to come up with a total replacement for Poser that will run natively in Linux, in the meantime I'll probably keep my dual boot partition, Ubuntu / Windows XP 64.  But once I can replace those last few windows programs or Wine matures to the point where it can handle the 3d apps I use with minimum fuss, odds are good windows will disappear from my machine entirely.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate windows - I'm not a "windows sucks" kinda guy or anything.  I just prefer Linux - it runs a lot more stable and with a lot less overhead, and the capabilities are simply remarkable.  The desktop distro's have come a long way in just the last few years, and Windows is become less and less necessary for me every day.  Just my experience mind you, your mileage may vary :)

Quote - I was one who was prepared to put up a good fight for Vista because I think a lot of Microsoft haters were trashing it for 'political' reasons. I was also one who went with XP fairly early when the prior generation fans were screaming about it. I fell in love with XP for 5 years.

I hate Microsoft and trash their OS and it's all political...because they produce crap and run a monopoly.  Heh.  :)

I've found that it's best to stay one generation back from whatever it is Microsuck thinks is wonderful.  I switched from W2K to WinXP when Vista came out, heh.  I like XP now, it's been stable and pretty much "finished" from the moment I started using it.  AFAIK there have been no updates.

Why beta test their crap?  I'll probably start using Vista when Vista's replacement is well on the way to adoption and Vista is "old news."  By then the thing will probably WORK.

I built my new machine around Vista premium. Intel board, Quad Processor, 8 gig ram. When I fired it up, everything worked ok until I tried to install an old program that, while it worked, the installer was infected with a virus. Anyways, I did a total HD wipe and reinstalled Vista Premium.  However, I found out that Premium didn't offer me the 64 bit version of the OS CD, so I upgraded to Vista Ultimate, which comes with a  64 bit CD. I then installed all my programs that would work, sans Photoshop 5.5 :crying: But after a while, the whole boot up routine continued to grow longer...at the last count, it took Vista 15 minutes to boot up to a viewable/usuable screen.

Anyways, I am currently back to Windows XP. I hate only having 4 Gig available (I know it's less), but at least it's working.

It just boggles the mind that after all the Vista hype (4 different editions of one OS System????) , and the fact that Vista still has problems that Microsoft doesn't have the balls to say "We'll continue to work on the problems in Vista", instead, they will go ahead with the announcement of their new OS due sometime in 2010????

And why on earth do we have to pay for technical support? No other company, afaik, charges for tech support.

Here is my two cents. Linux systems right now don't have hacker problems because Linux is not that prevolent on the net. Just wait, the more systems that come up on the net that use Linux, you will start getting the same thing. In just incase anyone is interested Linux is just an upgrade of the old unix system software. I do have to admitt that Linux is more stable than unix, but watch what happens when you get a virus. You will be complaining just as much as people do a XP and the other older OS's. This is just a repeat of the time when CPM was replaced with unix, because CPM was so correptable and unix followed suit after more systems started to use unix.

I figure in about a year maybe two Linux users will be crying the blues too!

Well, I have XP Pro X64 on my machine now, finally dumped Vista for good. Took awhile to track down all the various drivers but everything works, and blazingly fast too.

I have to say though I was over to a friends house over the weekend and he has Vista on his HP and it works great.  So I think it depends on the hardware you're running if Vista is good or not.