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I am on a Windows 7 Ultimate computer with 2.75GB ram and an Intel Pentium (I know, ancient) T2390 1.87 GHz dual core computer. I have an animation I would like to render, however the estimated time for 1 frame is about 3 hours, and my animation is 280 frames!

My tile size is 16x16 (auto tile size add-on said it was the best), Top to bottom, Cache BVH, Persistent Images, Use Spatial Splits, Save Buffers, and Static BVH for the viewport (I read this was the fastest in CPU render)

I know I can decrease the number of bounces, but there are many reflections and refractions in the scene.

So... my question is, if I use something like Puppy Linux and render the scene (assuming puppy linux can run blender), will it be faster?

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    $\begingroup$ Perhaps, but probably not significantly enough to justify the time of setting it up. You might want to look into using a renderfarm, such as sheepit $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 ♦
    Apr 25 '16 at 18:51
  • $\begingroup$ Probably not, but you could try: sheepit-renderfarm.com $\endgroup$
    – p2or
    Apr 25 '16 at 18:53
  • $\begingroup$ I was thinking of downloading puppy linux and boot it from a live usb, get blender and render it. There wouldn't be any point in using a renderfarm if I have to use the internet for it because my internet speed is horrible.. 24kb/s. $\endgroup$
    – Yubin Lee
    Apr 25 '16 at 18:53
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    $\begingroup$ Maybe I should use school computers. $\endgroup$
    – Yubin Lee
    Apr 25 '16 at 18:54
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    $\begingroup$ Well.. you will only have to upload your project and then download the resulting frames. Depending on the size of your file and the resolution at which you are rendering, that may or may not be doable on such a connection.. Perhaps there are some slightly-faster public internet connections around you could use? $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 ♦
    Apr 25 '16 at 18:59
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The latest answer is probably pretty different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpE2B2QSsa0 - their results show that Linux averages out to be twice as fast as Windows 10. I haven't tested this myself.

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I am using both windows and Linux on dual boot (using two different SSDs) and I experienced no significant difference in render speed. The only real difference for me is stability.

On my Win7 Pro 64Bit setup Blender tends to freeze more often than on openSuSE when I try to sculpt models with a vertex count of more than 2 million.

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  • $\begingroup$ Not only this, but GPU rendering also is much more stable. For some reason Windows has a terrible GPU timeout feature that causes the OS to force restart the driver after a certain time period. Linux doesn't have this problem, especially with enormous scenes. $\endgroup$
    – Italic_
    Apr 26 '16 at 2:40
  • $\begingroup$ I have an old ATI X1250 GPU which doesn't support opencl. Heck, it even has issues with opengl that make the 3d cursor move when I click on the arrow to move an object. Yeah... I ended up rendering the scene at 720p 40 samples, and it took me 4hrs 40 minutes to render a 280 frame animation. It was a dual core i3, if I am not mistaken. $\endgroup$
    – Yubin Lee
    Apr 28 '16 at 13:45
  • $\begingroup$ Oh, and school computers run fedora 23. $\endgroup$
    – Yubin Lee
    Apr 28 '16 at 13:45

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