# Media & Entertainment SIG
# Special Interest Group for Visual Effects, Animation, Post-Production and other Media & Entertainment fields.
The AlmaLinux Media & Entertainment SIG is a Special Interest Group dedicated to supporting and enhancing the use of AlmaLinux within the professional visual effects, animation, and post-production industries.
Our mission is to ensure AlmaLinux becomes the trusted, production-ready Linux platform for studios of all sizes by serving as the central hub for collaboration between artists, engineers, and open-source developers. We will work to ensure AlmaLinux is the trusted, production-ready Linux platform for studios large and small, while contributing patches, documentation, and reference architectures back to the AlmaLinux ecosystem.
# How to Join
Joining is easy! You can:
- Show up to a SIG meeting
- Pick up an issue from our tracker by assigning it to yourself
- Ask questions and get involved in our chat
Not every contributor wants to be a member of the SIG, but if you do, participation is straightforward and always welcome.
# Where we chat
We use Mattermost (the ~sig-media-entertainment (opens new window) room)for communication. Discussions also occurs on the AlmaLinux mailing list: media-entertainment-sig@lists.almalinux.org (opens new window).
# Where and when we meet
The Media & Entertainment SIG will hold monthly meetings on the first Wednesday of each month at 16:00 UTC. This time was chosen to accommodate members across Europe and Canada — aligning with late afternoon in Europe and mid-morning to midday across Canadian time zones. Meetings are open to all and will be held virtually through the AlmaLinux community platform.
# Activities, projects, and deliverables
The Media & Entertainment SIG will focus on: Certification & compatibility: Ensuring Media & Entertainment industry-standard tools (Nuke, Houdini, Maya, Blender, etc.) run smoothly on AlmaLinux.
Reference builds: Providing guides for configuring workstations, render nodes, and storage systems.
Studio workflows: Documentation for hybrid and on-prem Media & Entertainment pipelines (storage, networking, render farms).
Best practices: Security hardening, performance tuning, and reliability guidelines for production environments.
Community contributions: Packaging, testing, and bug reporting related to Media & Entertainment software.
# Help wanted
We welcome contributions of all shapes and sizes! Areas where help is needed: Packaging: Assist in building and packaging ASWF projects into RPMs and Creating automation playbooks for render farms, storage, and pipeline tools for AlmaLinux Testing: Run validation tests, Benchmarking and publishing performance data for hardware and workloads projects to ensure stability and compatibility with other Media & Entertainment / Animation software on AlmaLinux and reporting issues. Documentation: Write guides on how to install, configure, and integrate these projects into studio pipelines and transitions to AlmaLinux. Bug Reporting: Identify and report bugs specifically related to running ASWF software on AlmaLinux. Upstream Collaboration: Work with the upstream ASWF project teams to contribute patches and provide feedback from the AlmaLinux community.
Project/task tracker: [GitHub Issues link TBD]
# SIG members
- Tristan Theroux – SIG Lead (IT Infrastructure & Security Director, SHED Inc.)
- Cristian Slavik – Founding Member (NOX, VFX Supervisor)
- Mike Owen – Founding Member (AWS M&E)
- Eric Marundee - Founding Member (Independent)
- Aubert Vachon - Founding Member ( IT Operations Manager, Cinesite)
- John Kirkman - Founding Member ( Director of Platform & Infrastructure, Disney Animation Studios)
- Alex Fuller - Founding Member ( Lead R&D Software Developer, Flying Bark Productions)
- Laurence Cymet - Founding Member ( Head of Technology, WeFX)
- Timothy Toulis - Founding Member ( Systems Engineer, WeFX)
- Neal Gompa – Founding Member (Engineer, Velocity Limitless)
- Samuel Bissonnette - Contributor, Member (Pipeline TD, SHED Inc.)
# Additional information for SIG application approval
Timeline Q1 2026 Official kickoff, initial focus on documenting AlmaLinux workstation and render farm configurations.
Mid to late - 2026: Publication of reference architectures and compatibility guidelines for Media & Entertainment studios.
# Resources
Infrastructure: A Mattermost channel, mailing list, and GitHub space under AlmaLinux.
# Funding
None required at this stage, though future sponsorship may be requested for industry outreach (e.g., SIGGRAPH presence or licensing to test softwares).
# Why now
The Media & Entertainment industry is experiencing significant disruption due to recent licensing and support changes from established platform providers. This has created a clear and urgent demand for a stable, open-source, and enterprise-grade Linux distribution that studios can rely on. AlmaLinux is perfectly positioned to fill this gap. This SIG will act as the crucial bridge between the AlmaLinux community and the M&E industry. We will ensure the needs of studios, artists, and engineers are not just heard, but are actively documented, addressed, and integrated into the AlmaLinux ecosystem, guaranteeing it is the trusted, long-term platform for production pipelines.