Linux is building up a quiet reputation when it comes to animated movies. For several years the CinePaint software (a fork of The GIMP, and formerly called FilmGIMP) has been powering several animation studios. It was used to create the Shrek movies, as well as the Stuart Little titles and a host of live-action blockbuster movies such as the Harry Potter series.

Cars is the latest blockbuster from Pixar and its makers also relied on Linux, this time as a platform on which the proprietary MenVee rendering software ran.

The Shrek movies were created on HP workstations running Red Hat Linux and it’s likely the Dell servers used at Pixar ran Red Hat too, although in both cases it’s likely the distro was severely hacked to make it fit the unusual demands of animation and rendering. But that’s the beauty of open source software.

However, one thing seems a a little strange about Cars: bearing in mind Steve Jobs owns Pixar, and also Apple Computer, you’d think the guys behind Cars would be sold on using Macs and OS X as a platform. Maybe they just got tired of that single mouse button.