While the kernel that Solidworks licenses is available for Linux and macOS, Solidworks does not work on either of those platforms; even if it is emulated through a virtual machine there are problems unless you can pass through specific graphics cards in their entirety or use very specific vGPUs.
What does work on macOS and Linux is the while cloud-based 3DEXPERIENCE Dassault offers, which imo is a joke.
My understanding of why Solidworks could not be ported to macOS or Linux is because of OpenGL implementation.
Windows was the only OS that offered relative development stability which is crucial with the obscene amount of bugs that emerge with such a complex geometric toolset.
Although Proton/DXVK/Lutris perform better than native Windows over time with their caching, I’ll always miss Borderlands 2 PhysX on my GTX 980 Classified. But it’s just not worth the security risk. If any of the hundreds of remote Microsoft servers were to become compromised by an attacker, using exploits unpatched by Microsoft, they have direct access to your PC, your UEFI firmware, your drive firmware. Your mouse, USB drives, keyboard, bluetooth adapter could all be compromised at a firmware level and then go on to infect other vulnerable devices exposed to it.
This is why to have as little proprietary software possible running natively on your system. Although by “accident”; in the past everyone should remember when Windows 8 was deleting the grub bootloader and bricking existing linux installs. That was just the tip of the iceberg.
It’s another reason why we don’t trust TPM (quite a pun really)
Unless something has changed, I thought Windows installs have always messed up existing Linux boot loaders. I always installed that thing first, and Linux second for my dual boot systems, because Linux created a boot entry for 'doze.
yeah the workaround for that was disabling Windows fastboot if I remember but just the fact that the OS has that level of control and you can’t trust the code it’s just insane to think that’s secure.
I wasn’t going to join this discussion, but today I’ve reached a point where I really want to. I sympathize with people doing graphics or other media production, CAD etc., most of the time Windows is the lesser evil.
I’m a software engineer. Both of my current clients require me to work on remote Windows machines. I connect to those using a Windows laptop provided by a third company that directly employs me. In the past year pretty much half of the time at least one of the instances of Windows mentioned has some serious problem that makes my work miserable or impossible. Either an update breaks Windows and I need to request a new VM. Or an update somehow breaks my development environment requiring setting it up from scratch. Or there are IT-level problems that cause the need to replace instances of the VMs. I am then required to manually transfer my data to the new instance, reinstall everything and set up the environment from scratch. Or someone combines Win11 rollout on all the laptops with new branding update requiring everyone to go through the update process over the internet which then fails for half of the company. Or laptop manufacturer’s update agent rolls out a new BIOS that bricks the device.
Today is one of those days. Or really not today because I’ve been experiencing a range of weird problems for some months, today I’ve just realized that my VM is somehow broken and my project just stopped launching in debug mode. Seriously, I’ve recreated the environment multiple times, checked different versions of my dev tools, had my collegues see and verify that I’m not just doing something stupid. This time I was asked to create a tech support tickes. I will have to somehow convince tech support, that my array of vague problems really are caused by the Windows installation and not my stupidity, while not even being able to provide solid evidence for that.
I’m being paid for the hours I actually put into the project and I’m behind with deadlines. I want to change this job, but it requires a lot of effort nowdays, which doesn’t work well with my current life circumstances. And I will be tied by my lengthy exit period.
I’ve had the same kind of experiences in my previous company. But it did allow installing Linux and so I did out of frustration. At first I was the butt of many jokes because of some propertiary software it used that didn’t work well on Linux (instant messaging, some weird MS Office specific stuff, printing services etc.). But then everything was moved to the cloud which meant that it was all just a website. Then I was one of the few people who DIDN’T have any IT problems.
Just curious, are you using ansible to build up your environment? I ‘know’ it is useable to manage windows https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/os_guide/windows_usage.html but I haven’t really heard much about people actually doing that.(LOTS AND LOTS of bias in what I hear because of who i listen to)
No. Doing it so many times it would probably make sense. But then I’m not sure it’s possible to automate all of the steps. And occasionally I end up working on a Windows instance with do admin priviledges, which complicates things. Even with admin rights, the OS is heavily locked down and for example I can’t install a different browser or even ad blocking extension in Edge.
I think we should see it like this. There are mor computers than ever out there. When people have little money they have to either deal with not working or slow Windows or switch to Linux.
Great. Brilliant.
Still not switching to your niche distro until it can run what I need to do my job. I don’t give a fuck about network switches and cloud servers running on Linux because those are not what I interface with. I care about what is in front of my fingertips.
And frankly you really need to drop this absurd entitled attitude you have to the attention of other people. You want people to be enthusiastic Linux users? Give them something to be enthusiastic about.
We do need to do a better job at comms sometimes. Understand that we get pretty frustrated about the overall situation so sometimes we vent or joke. I’m guilty of this too.
Many of us are trying to grow a more open/free and respectful digital environment for everyone to live in. I think it’d be objectively better for everyone** if the “Linux enthusiasts” manage to win this battle against those who would turn everyone into digital slaves at the mercy of incomprehensible lawyer written fine print.
So speaking for myself anyway, given what’s at stake, that’s why I get frustrated at what seems to be a complete lack of even the most casual interest or help we get from others… to the point that many people will actually defend these nonfree abusive companies. If that’s not a Stockholm Syndrome I don’t know what is.
**Except for the evil companies out there who’s main strategy is vendor lock in or privacy intrusion.
Apologies if I missed something, but have you tried running that software through Lutris? Even adobe photoshop works through it last time I tried.
If your laptop processor supports VT-X (i believe) you can just run windows programs in a VM and pass thru the main GPU, then run the host linux OS on the iGPU.
Speaking of which, I really wish companies would offer a line of GPU’s that support full splitting. I think it was a feature on server rack GPUs if I remember. . So you could have a system with a single GPU, split it at a low level to appear as two of the same GPU with half the video memory, and run a host OS and a VM side by side with full GPU acceleration. This would make QubesOS attractive for a lot more everyday use cases.
The thing is people have to be fed up enough to be ready to switch to linux.
I no longer work on winhosed machines either.
If people are willing I instal the most user friendly versions that suit their needs ( dual boot) and encourage them to try it out ( just do not make critical system changes)
But forcing change just pushes them away.
Its user experience appears to be designed by someone on a cocaine binge.
Its stability would depend on the position of the stars, seemingly.
And its performance fell short of “slideshow” At the time I was rocking a ryzen 3900x and a 6900xt.
I switched to shapr3d on the ipad and found it to be the only cad software that i can use in a reasonably performant manner. I tried the stallman way. It didnt work specifically because i had work to do and time is money.
Im reminded of a quote: “linux is free if you dont value your time”
Oh, I am not claiming FreeCAD is anywhere near great yet. The basics are there and it is impressive what you get for free, but it is at best alpha quality.
At this stage I would never use FreeCAD for a project that puts bread on the table. It is, at this point, good for people like me, that only dabble in CAD ever so often. Paying $8k per year for a Solidworks license is simply not an option if it is not putting bread on the table, it is that simple.
I also want to be clear, here - Solidworks and Photoshop are two great pieces of software and while I may disagree with their licensing model, the software in and of itself is awesome. Not only that, the community around them are great, too, and the training material is AAA, top notch. You do get what you pay for in this case.
However, both GIMP and FreeCAD are in the same place as Blender was in 2005 - A solid foundation that needs a LOT of love to grow. Blender underwent that journey and is today slowly taking over the 3D modelling landscape, simply because all school kids can get started on Blender and get proficient with that tool now. Writing is on the wall for Maya, even though they are putting up a good fight.
Can FreeCAD and GIMP make the same journey Blender did? Yes. Will they? No idea. I hope so. FreeCAD is improving massively with every release, and it is good enough at this point to cut your teeth on - but yes, definitely it is still rough, especially when it comes to modifying models. Here is one recent review that is fair, but quite harsh of it:
And sorry, not buying an iDevice, I don’t want to sell my firstborn to the devil as per the EULA
but in the end they have a choice. Okay maybe if your work place or school or something is totally microsoft you don’t but individual people have a choice.
The more these companies do what they’re doing, the worse it gets, the more people will look for alternatives especially when it comes to $ and remember some people don’t mind all of the bleh, as long as their games work, their Movies work and they can browse the internet, well…what works for them works for them…
linux doesn’t solve every problem. Solves a whole bunch but not every one.
For me, the reason I still have a Win10 workstation is gaming. Everything, but gaming, I do on Linux. Not everything runs on Linux seamlessly. VR, for example, is a bear. The Vulkan API has done an amazing job with several AAA titles supporting it. But there are still proprietary graphics systems out there that will not run, or run at such a penalty that’s just isn’t worth it. MS knows this and is buying up several studios to make sure their DX drivers are embedded in popular games.
It is getting close, but we’re not there yet. Win 10 will be my last MS OS, however. That’s what they promised me and I’m holding them to it.
but not every one.