This is true. But chances are that if users are still running 32 bits today, they simply don’t need more than 2-3 GB per app. Considering 8GB costs only about as much as a few cups of Starbucks coffee, they would have switched already, no? Hence, there’s very little point for them to switch.
I do agree you shouldn’t do a new install of a 32 bit OS on any machine today. In fact, just the ability to run 64-bit executables if you have none other makes it worthwhile to install 64 bit in any case. Sorry it wasn’t clear from my previous post.
This may very well be true, however, from a user’s perspective it is irrelevant. As long as Blender release builds use an old compiler on Windows to maintain support for XP it is unlikely that they will ever be as fast as they are on platforms where decades old versions of the OS are no longer supported and builds can be made with a newer toolchain.
Note the performance of Cycles isn’t the only area that suffers. I find the interactive performance to be a much bigger problem on Windows.
If there is no statistically significant difference between somebody who is registered and votes on BA and somebody who doesn’t, then it is still representative (assuming a large enough sample count). Of course there’s no way to know whether that is true, but then again I don’t see a strong reason why there would be a significant difference.
Of course, one could make a trollish argument that Linux users have more free time, thus spend more time on forums and thus are overrepresented, whereas Windows and especially Mac users are all so tied up in their professional schedule that they are underrepresented.
If in 2007 Blender was downloaded 800.000 times, while of course some people may have downloaded more than once, as it has gained in recognition and popularity a lot since 2007, and if we keep in mind that some countries since 2007 have emerged as big 3D work poles that level of budget made Blender even more interesting, i’m sure the real amount of Blender users must be close to that number or at least half of it.
I’ve personally downloaded Blender from blender.org at least a dozen times this year. There’s no way to tell the real active user count from these statistics, but 400k is probably an overestimation.
In any case, the absolute number of Blender users is irrelevant, if the users are evenly picked then a number of say 1000 is usually a perfectly fine sample count to get a reasonable statistical estimate.
So to make that poll relevant , a good idea would be to make it more accessible, maybe post it on every possible Blender related boards on the world, or at least make mention on every major Blender websites (so people reading could report that poll to the boards they frequent)
Well, feel free to repost this thread anywhere else, or “like” it on Facebook.
That’s something hard to do anyways, as the most successfull Blender poll, " the great blender survey " from Blenderguru had only a bit more of 3400 answers sometime in 2010.
Which is a perfectly fine sample count, as long as his users aren’t biased in any significant way. Seeing that he’s an educator, his users might be more biased towards beginner/non-professional.
What causes could those be? The poll is public and anonymous (at least to me). If you believe that OS choice is sensitive information, then I guess you shouldn’t vote…
EDIT:
It’s certainly not irrelevant, if you want to be “adventurous” you can get a mingw build today and benefit from it today. Switching to a newer Visual Studio version is also on the agenda. So, a user might want to think twice before investing time into Linux when the same performance gain could be had on Windows.
Note the performance of Cycles isn’t the only area that suffers. I find the interactive performance to be a much bigger problem on Windows.
I’ve never noticed that. It would be good if we had some reliable tests for this, because something like that can be very subjective.
You can only take these types of polls as just for interest. There is selection bias that won’t necessarily make it representative of the whole blender userbase. While this forum has a very large number of registered users, when you look at the posts, the vast majority are made by a tiny proportion of that user base. You also will miss off any institutional users.
Just take any results as being interesting but with a huge pinch of salt
There are quite a few technical artist out there who would love to work in linux, and see the perks of doing so, but ultimately will not simply because their pipeline is multi-application and their hardware needs the best OS for driver support. I can see linux getting a huge boost however once the SteamOS kicks in and the interest in supporting linux begins to evolve including a polishing of the OS itself. The sad thing is much of linux development is fragmented and often a bit extreme in their likes and dislikes, which can result the OS being more of technical challenge than a user friendly OS that seeks to grow in general usage.
You can only take these types of polls as just for interest. There is selection bias that won’t necessarily make it representative of the whole blender userbase. While this forum has a very large number of registered users, when you look at the posts, the vast majority are made by a tiny proportion of that user base. You also will miss off any institutional users.
Of course, but what could that bias be? Why should it be large? Maybe there a billion Linux Blender users hidden in China! Again, absolute numbers aren’t important.
Web Access, not necessarily. Download statistics would be, though. Do you have access to it?
The amount of OSX users surprised me, I always imagined there being more somehow.
At the moment, I am having to use Windows 7 on my tower unit - out of necessity. Linux won’t recognise my Nvidia graphics card even after trying various methods on the internet. I’m crossing my fingers that Linux an Nvidia will get along better soon.
I’ve only been using a 64 bit OS for about a year now, I could’ve upgraded to Win7 64 bit on my old machine, but I figured that after seeing 6 years of chip advancements, it would be best to move to 64 bit with an entirely new machine.
Besides that, the first few years of me sticking with 32 bits with my old machine was because the 64 bit functionality in Blender wasn’t mature yet, and good thing it has, I love the fact that I don’t have to worry so much about detail management now that I can use 16 gigs of RAM.
A lot of Windows 8 users already. It’s a shame Windows gestures are not supported in blender. Im using surface pro and sculpting/texturing rocks with stylus input, but it would be so much better if two finger zoom/pan/rotate would work…
I’m now a Windows user, Win 8.1 (Voted 8) on my desktop, laptop and tablet.
An (ex) Ubuntu > Mint > Fedora user, I found the lack of software support, extra effort to get some hardware working (compared to Windows 7/8) and general use of various Linux OS’s got in my way. Plus GDocs/Libre Office doesn’t really cut it for me, and my 365 Subscription costs $25/device/year (family has 2 installs)
Now happily finding the speed of Windows 8 on my PC with its SSD (same for Laptop) is great, I actually used the modern UI for a bit (several mins, I didn’t ignore the simple hints at the beginning ;P) , its really not hard to use at all, and get a fair bit more out of my PC since I moved back to Windows (and bought 2 Personal Use licenses ~$150 each for the pro version).
I still use linux variants a fair bit for my study (Software Engineering), but am more than happy when I get to use Visual Studio again as well compared to eclipse or text files on linux (Java/C++)
I was 32bit window7 on my old desktop until I had an unfortunate urban legend style incident. My Windows 7 DVD explode in my DVD drive during a reinstall I kept the fragements and the DVD because up until that happened I used to think that was a myth.
I am upgrading my CPU, MB and RAM this month so I going 64bit as I still have that disk. Lucky if you buy the boxed version of windows you get both disks.
Outstanding Vicky. LOL The more I think about it the more I think you have my other ‘puter’ sitting here with no HD. Vista 32 bit, 1.87 with Intel integrated graphics. If I even thought about making smoke Blender would crash when using it.
I still have my fingers crossed for this Xmas and a replacement for ‘Old Betsy’ Just because it would be so much more pleasurable to use. Your work is outstanding regardless of having to wait around for the results. But, who knows with a new machine you might try your talented hand with a few animations of your creations. OK Santa do Atlanta.
Please Windows users, you do a dual boot with Linux and try to learn and support Linux.
Windows users have a lot of knowledge and experience with professional software and they can always bring many good things. Join to the Linux community and help us to improve (just like Blender)
Not until the Linux community kills off the last vestige of cases where one has to use the terminal and allows one to simply unzip an application package and run it instantly. From what I’ve heard, the methods to get a program running on Linux is like a Rubik’s Cube compared to Windows.
That and the fact that driver support from GPU vendors is well behind that of Windows, how much incentive do you think they have to support Linux if it’s yet easy enough for the vast majority of Windows users (so they can switch?). Linux Mint is starting to get close, but there’s still the issue of easily running applications downloaded off the net.
