The trend is a public-relations coup for a technology that still has a somewhat anticorporate image. Linux is free in two senses. It can be obtained on the Internet without charge, and its underlying source code can be freely studied and improved through a process known as open-source development. That helps studios tweak the operating system and update key programs they have written themselves. With Linux, we can do it all ourselves.
Customers also can save on hardware.
Those prices may lead makers of specialized animation programs to lower their prices, too. H-P. The result, DreamWorks says, is an unprecedented level of realism for everything from characters' hair and clothes to the fire and liquids around them. Some studios began using Linux for some chores as far back as 1996. The push into workstations, however, is a more recent phenomenon, driven by cost pressures on studios, improvements to Linux's reliability and performance, and new Linux versions of popular animation programs. It estimates that at least one-quarter of the major studios have begun switching to Linux.