That's for rendering, where the OS and Desktop experience doesn't really matter, and the cheaper it is the better.
Few pros do the actual editing and color work (where the decisions are made, not the rendering part) on Linux.
Every major color house I've worked in runs Linux exclusively in their suites (CO3, The Mill, Technicolor, etc).
That's not to say windows and OSX suites don't exist, I use them and my own suite runs windows, but the highest end of color is basically Linux only.
The recommended setup is a super micro chassis with dual xeons (12 core cpus min rec, 20 core preferred), min 32GB ram (usually at least 64,128+ common on high end systems), SSD for OS, thunderbolt (min)/pciE/10GbE/fibre (preferred) attached storage usually 8 bay raid6 or similar min, almost always NVIDIA GPUs with 8x 1080ti's or the latest Titans being the most common set up I see.
This runs on CentOS or RHEL 6.8 or 7.3.
Video signal is output over SDI from a PCIe to a LUT box (for color transforms) then to a color critical display (FSi, Sony, or Dolby typically with the best suites using cinema projectors). A second SDI runs out to a box showing video scopes. Everything is usually calibrated by light Illusions software and using a Minolta colorimeter probe (typically a 3rd party service does this every few months).
The GUI monitor(s) are usually just regular consumer whatever.
The software is controlled by a large, $30K control panel that looks similar to an airplane cockpit.
That's most of the important stuff, but I can fill in details where you're curious.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/7zms77/gnome_2_spott...
The recommended setup is a super micro chassis with dual xeons (12 core cpus min rec, 20 core preferred), min 32GB ram (usually at least 64,128+ common on high end systems), SSD for OS, thunderbolt (min)/pciE/10GbE/fibre (preferred) attached storage usually 8 bay raid6 or similar min, almost always NVIDIA GPUs with 8x 1080ti's or the latest Titans being the most common set up I see.
This runs on CentOS or RHEL 6.8 or 7.3.
Video signal is output over SDI from a PCIe to a LUT box (for color transforms) then to a color critical display (FSi, Sony, or Dolby typically with the best suites using cinema projectors). A second SDI runs out to a box showing video scopes. Everything is usually calibrated by light Illusions software and using a Minolta colorimeter probe (typically a 3rd party service does this every few months).
The GUI monitor(s) are usually just regular consumer whatever.
The software is controlled by a large, $30K control panel that looks similar to an airplane cockpit.
That's most of the important stuff, but I can fill in details where you're curious.
At the risk of asking a silly question, what does the LUT-box do that couldn't be done in software (or, I guess, why isn't it done in software)?
This stuff is fascinating to me.
Do you know of any good YouTube videos on colorist hardware? I've seen a couple of videos on workflow, but neither went into the guts of the machines and LUT-boxes.
