Linux Blender FAQ

GENERAL
What is different in Blender for Linux, compared to Blender for other
platforms?
Is there any advantage of running Blender in Linux?
Blender is running very slowly on Linux, why?
Do I need any particular window manager or graphic desktop to run Blender?
I would still like to try something more to make it run faster; what could I
do?
How do I find out if I'm using acceleration for my graphics card?
How will my graphics card behave with Blender and Linux?
If I make a .blend file in Linux, can it be opened in other platforms?
What about binary plug-ins? Can they be used across different platforms?

INSTALLING
Do I need root access to install Blender?
Why isn't there an automated installer?
How do I install Blender on my Linux system?
Why are hotkeys not working the way they should?
What do these error messages mean?
"Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>"
"Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>"
"Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]"
"'import site' failed; use -v for traceback"
"sys_init:warning - no sitedirs added from site module."
What does the error "Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0" mean?
What does the error about a missing libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 mean?
What does "ERROR: File .blanguages not found" mean?

MISCELLANEOUS / MORE INFORMATION
What about scaling up?
Where do I find more information?
I have some contributions for this document, how do contact the FAQ maintainer?

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GENERAL

* What is different in Blender for Linux, compared to Blender for other
platforms?

    * On the Windows version there is a button in the GUI (on the top bar) for
      switching between window mode and full screen mode. On the Linux version
      that button does not exist and, by default, Blender starts in full screen
      mode. To start Blender in window mode you should use the -w option: ./
      blender -w
    * On the Windows version you can render your animations to video files
      already compressed with the codecs installed on your computer (there is
      an option for this on the rendering buttons), but at the time of this
      writing, under Linux, you can only use the JPEG codec or no codec at all.
      For further video compression you will need to render your animations to
      an uncompressed file, and then use another program to do any needed video
      compression, or render your animations to sequenced image files and use a
      video composition program to create the final video file. (By taking this
      last route you could do all the actual rendering on Linux and only do the
      final video composition using Blender for other platform).
    * In the near future, a .zip file containing the basic Python libraries
      will be distributed alongside the Windows version of Blender (thus, in
      most cases doing a full Python install would not be necessary for running
      complex scripts). On Linux you are required to do a full Python install
      if you want to run complex scripts (but there is a very good chance that
      Python is already installed on your computer, since Python is a de facto
      component on most Linux distros).

* Is there any advantage to running Blender on Linux?

Yes, especially in the speed department. Many users (including me) have
reported that Blender loads and renders noticeably faster in Linux than in
other operating systems. Please take note that no matter what operating system
you are using, rendering from the command line is (in 99% of the cases) faster
than rendering from the GUI.

Besides, considering consumed computer resources, Linux places a lighter load
on your CPU, and leaves more free resources to be used for actual 3D work.

* Blender is running very slowly in Linux, why?

Your first stop should be the advice given athttp://www.elysiun.com/forum/
viewtopic.php?t=13722

If those advices don't solve the problem then your next stop is checking if you
are getting hardware acceleration for OpenGL operations (Blender uses OpenGL
for all its GUI drawing operations, so having an OpenGL accelerated graphic
card truly makes a difference when it comes to GUI response time.)

Find out which GLX driver is been used on your system (more info on that
bellow); if you get "Mesa GLX Indirect" it means that you are NOT using any
hardware acceleration at all.

Check if your graphics card maker provides Linux drivers for your card. By
replacing the general purpose Indirect Mesa driver with a driver made
specifically for your card you could see speed increases up to 400% (my own
experience) or more.

Nvidia, ATI and many other graphics card manufacturers provide Linux specific
drivers for their cards. Bear in mind that those speed increases might come at
the cost of some stability issues.

Blender supports both Mesa and proprietary glx drivers, but some users have
reported buggy behavior coming from using proprietary drivers, while other
users have reported outstanding performance gains without any trouble.

* Do I need any particular window manager or graphic desktop to run Blender?

No. As long as you have a working X system (Xorg/Xfree86/etc) and an OpenGL
driver (see next question) you should be fine. There is no difference from
using KDE, GNOME or whatever your desktop manager might be.

* How do I find out if I'm using acceleration for my graphic card?

Within Blender, open a new text window and type this:

from Blender.BGL import *
print "GL Vendor ", glGetString(GL_VENDOR)
print "GL Renderer", glGetString(GL_RENDERER)
print "GL Version ", glGetString(GL_VERSION)

Now press Alt-P or click on File -> Run Python Script. Go to your console and
see what is printed. If you find something like:

"Mesa GLX Indirect
Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
1.3 Mesa 4.0.4"

then you are not using acceleration for your graphics card (noticed the
"Indirect" word?). On the other hand, if you get something like:

"GeForce4 Ti 4200 with AGP8X/AGP/SSE2
NVIDIA Corporation
1.4.0 NVIDIA 43.63"

or like:

"GeForce2 MX/PCI/3DNOW!
NVIDIA Corporation
1.3.1 NVIDIA 31.23"

or even like:

"GL Vendor VA Linux Systems, Inc.
GL Renderer Mesa DRI Voodoo3 20010501 x86/MMX/3DNow!
GL Version 1.2 Mesa 3.4.2"

it means that you are using a real accelerated graphic driver.

Another way to find information about your current OpenGL setup is by using the
glxinfo command; that will yield more technical oriented data about your
system. Just be prepared to pipe the output trough a LESS command since glxinfo
can sometimes be quite verbose.

* I would still like to try something more to make it run faster; what can I
do?

So you are felling a little adventurous, aren't you? Here is a small tip for
you: Ctrl-Shift-Alt-Z, but don't be disappointed if it doesn't improve your
situation at all.

* Why are there 2 versions of Blender for Linux? What does the static/dynamic
mean?

Actually there are 4 versions of Blender for Linux, two for x86 processors and
two for PowerPC processors. For each processor family we have dynamic and
static builds available. (2 x 2 = 4).

On a static build, all the system dependencies needed to run Blender are
included, even a software based OpenGL environment. So if you are having
dependency errors or you are unable to find a proper OpenGL driver for your
graphic card the static build should run on your system. You should consider a
static build as a troubleshooting/worst case scenario option.

On a dynamic build, the dependencies are not included, so Blender will use the
libraries already installed and available on your system. Also, Blender will
use any OpenGL accelerated driver that it might find on your system. Generally
speaking, a dynamic build should be preferred over a static build.

Always make sure, despite your static or dynamic choice, to download the
version that matches your processor. If you have an Intel, AMD or Cyrix
processor you should go with the i386 version. If you have a Macintosh (or one
of those rare Motorola CPUs) then you should go with the PPC version.

* How will my graphics card behave with Blender and Linux?

The best way to find out is to look at the testimonials of users who have a
graphics card that is the same as or similar to yours.
Go and take a look into the official Blender OpenGL/Gfx database located
at http://blender.org/modules/gfxdatabase/

* If I make a .blend file in Linux, can it be opened in other platforms?

Yes. Every .blend made in any platform should open in any other platform. If
you ever come across a .blend file that opens OK in a platform but won't open
on another platform then you have officially found a bug and we would be most
interested in hearing about it on our Bug tracker, located at http://
projects.blender.org/tracker/?atid=125&group_id=9&func=browse

* What about binary plug-ins? Can they be used cross platform?

No. A binary plug-in must be compiled specifically for the same platform where
Blender is running (and usually for the same Blender version). If the plug-in
has a .dll extension it is intended to be used on Windows; if it has a .so
extension then it is compiled to run on Linux.

Fortunately, plug-ins are usually distributed in both .dll and .so forms. For a
good repository of Blender binary plug-ins, take a look at http://
www.blender3d.org/cms/Resources.181.0.html#569

Also, some binary plug-ins are distributed with Blender, they are stored inside
the "plugins" directory where you extracted Blender. The trick is that they are
not compiled yet. Just go into that directory and type make; everything else
goes automatically from there. (of course you need to have gcc and make
installed on your system, but those two are practically omnipresent on all
distros). (CAUTION! SuSE Linux 9.1 Personal Edition does not includestall
compilers by default!)

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INSTALLING

* Do I need root access to install Blender?

No. If you install Blender under your home directory it will run just fine.

However, just like with any Linux program, installing the needed dependencies
might (as in "could happen but is not certain") need root access.

* Why there isn't an automated installer?

Because the install process is so easy that even a 2-year-old kid could do it.

Besides, distro makers sometimes make funky decisions about where to locate
files on their Linux version. So, to be safe, a manual install is the best
choice (remember that I said it is a really easy process).

* How do I install Blender on my Linux system?

Short answer: the file you downloaded is a compressed folder, just uncompress
it and run the blender executable from that directory.

Long answer: (not fully written, in the meantime read
http://www.blender.org/modules/documentation/htmlI/c217.html )

* Why are hotkeys not working the way they should?

Most window manager programs trap user's key events and analyze them before
sending them to the running program. If the pressed hotkey is already assigned
on the window manager it will never make it into the running program.

In other words, if you have a particular keyboard combination defined on your
window manager, and Blender uses that same keyboard combination as a hotkey,
the one defined on the window manager will prevail. KDE's window manager
default configuration is known to have more than a few collisions with
Blender's hotkeys.

Until the time comes when all Blender hotkeys are user configurable, your only
two choices are to go into your Window Manger configuration and disable or re-
direct the offending hotkey; or to try to substitute the troublemaker hotkey
with its GUI counterpart (which is not always feasible).

To access KDE's hotkey editor go into Control Center -> Regional Settings and
Accessibility -> Keyboard Shortcuts.

A special note should be made about the ~ hotkey (the one that toggles all your
layers on/off). If that hot key isn't working for you, the Window Manager is
not the one to be blamed, but your keyboard configuration:

For some non-standard English configurations, that key is used as a modifier to
input Latin characters, specially the  letter (ASCII codes 164 and 165) used
often in the Spanish language (like in "Pia Colada"). On those keyboard
configurations, the ~ key event isn't treated as a keystroke in itself, but
like a modifier for the next key that you press. Again, besides changing your
keyboard configuration, there isn't much that could be done to fix it.

* What do these error messages mean?
"Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>"
"Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>"
"Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]"
"'import site' failed; use -v for traceback"
"sys_init:warning - no sitedirs added from site module."

Those error messages all point in the same direction: A proper Python
installation could not be found by Blender. Either you don't have Python
installed, or you have an outdated version. At the time of this writing,
Blender uses Python 2.3.

The error is non fatal, meaning that Blender will still open and work, but
you'll be in trouble if you try to run a script that requires Python functions
not already provided by Blender (file import/export scripts are good candidates
for that).

* What does the error "Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0"" mean?

If you are getting this error, it means that the glx extension is not enabled
in /etc/X11/XF86Config.
GLX allows Blender to access your 3D card and draw to the screen, but some
distributions ship with GLX disabled.

It likely means that you just don't have OpenGL installed or properly
configured on your system. (It is also a symptom that you should review your 3D
card setup in general).

Unfortunately there isn't a easy answer on how to enable it, since it varies
from distro to distro.

As a general tip it can be said that most of the times a line that says "Load
"glx"" within the Modules section of your XF86Config or xorg.conf file is
involved. However, Your distro manual should point you in the right direction.

* What does the error about a missing libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 mean?

This means that you need to install the C++ compatibility libraries. If you are
on RedHat, that would be compat-libstdc++-*.rpm.

* What does "ERROR: File .blanguages not found" mean?

It means that at load time Blender was unable to find its locale translation
files. When you uncompressed the file where Blender is distributed, a small
hidden directory called .blender was uncompressed as well. Just copy or move
that directory to your home directory and the error should go away.

While you might not be interested in using the international translation
options, I'm sure that you would be interested in using the many scripts that
are distributed with Blender. Those scripts are stored inside .blender as well,
so by copying that directory to your home directory you will solve two issues
at the same time.

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MISCELLANIES / MORE INFORMATION

* What about scaling up?

If you are thinking about implementing Blender on a large scale, then you
should know that there are renderfarm solutions already available.

At the inside of the Blender Foundation there is ongoing work to develop
network rendering capabilities, more details can be found at
http://projects.blender.org/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=150

Outside the Blender Foundation, there is DrQueue (a Linux, Irix and OSX based
GLP network rendering tool). It is freely available at http://www.drqueue.org/
and at the time of this writing it supports Blender, Maya, BMRT and Pixie
(support for FreeBSD and Aqsis is being worked on).

Also, there is the Piovra renderfarm manager ( http://utenti.lycos.it/mattioli/
), which is free and with many features. More information and performance tips
about Piovra, written by the developer, can be seen at
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=150501&page=1&pp=15 (English) and
http://www.blender.it/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&topic=1186&forum=15&start=80 (Italian).

In addition, Render Planet ( https://renderplanet.com/ ) is offering both paid
and free renderfarm services for Blender, Maya and Lightwave users.

When it comes to project management, Blender has built-in data linking and
sharing capabilities that make it easier for larger groups to collaborate on a
single project. Besides that, users have reported success by using the Makefile
system to manage complex projects involving large animations. More information
about that particular subject can be found at
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=155978 .

NOTICE: The Blender Foundation doesn't endorse or sponsor the DrQueue, Piovra,
or the Render Planet products, they are included in this FAQ for the sake of
completeness.

* Where do I find more information?

On the Internet:

http://www.blender3d.com/
http://www.blender.org/
http://www.elysiun.com/
http://www.cgtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=91

The Internet is the preferred way for getting more information related to
Blender, as well as to participate in the user communities and stay tuned with
the latest developments.

Through face-to-face interaction:

Each year, the official Blender Conference is held in Amsterdam, usually around
the end of October, where many of the community members gather to discuss new
development proposals, to hear seminars given by famous community members and
people involved in the CG industry who are putting Blender to good use, among
others' activities. Also, there are the annual Blender Art Festival and the
Suzanne Awards Ceremony where the most outstanding artworks and development
contributions are recognized.

At the same time that the official Conference is taking place, smaller
conferences and informal get-togethers take place around the globe, organized
by volunteer community members.

During Siggraph, each year small BOF sections are programmed, as well as
information stands on the expo floor.

Through books:

About once a year, the Blender Foundation releases a new documentation oriented
book related to Blender. By buying one of those books you help finance the
Blender Foundation.

Other Blender books, not released by the BF, are available through major
bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Besides English language, there
are German, Italian and Japanese books available.

* I have some contributions for this document, how do contact the FAQ
maintainer?

That would be me, Juan J. Pena M. (also known as Apollux). You can usually
catch me around the forums mentioned on the previous answer, or you could reach
me by e-mail me on jjulio.pena at verizon.net.do (just substitute the "at" with
the @ symbol, and no empty spaces in between).

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Thanks for taking the time to read this document. This FAQ was last updated on
August 5th, 2004.

* The FAQ author would like to thank the many people that has contributed, in
various forms, to this document.
