That is 10,000% people who don’t do creative work especially professionally. I am fine with gimp and darktable versus anything Adobe/paid but I also barely use them lol. I would be back off Linux in a heartbeat if I honestly couldn’t use something I needed even though I prefer it.
Medical work, too. Several exam machines only work with Windows. I’ve heard once that “wine’s pretty good nowadays”, which completely ignores the detail that it isn’t tested with said equipment and its drivers.
Anything related to engineering, whether civil or mechanical, also goes with either Windows or Mac, because the free CAD options don’t hold a candle to AutoCAD and others.
Lastly, there’s no FOSS alternative to completely replace Microsoft Active Directory, so offices where 90% of the work is done on the web browser won’t bother because they’ll be losing control over individual machines.
There’s so much focus on “me” and “freedom” that they often forget there’s a whole damn world of different needs around them.
I agree with this, outside of bs windows throws if you change the motherboard. Desktop Linux stability reminds me of Windows 7 levels of OS stability. Great for most, not for mission critical.
With that said i feel you are being overtly critical to FOSS CAD software. I use FreeCAD in a professional setting and it is extremely stable, and for my use case it is as capable with no missing features. Yes the software isn’t beginner friendly, but I honestly found it made my designs more accurate since it had more constraints for sketches.
What were you using BEFORE FreeCAD if it has MORE sketch constraints?? Man, I found it so limiting compared to NX. Especially the sketching. And surfacing appeared to be basically nonexistent. Maybe I’m too spoiled with NX, but I dont think I could function for even a day on FreeCAD. It’s worse than SolidWorks (and I hate SolidWorks). I really, really wanted to like it. I even gave it a second chance when 1.0 dropped.
Ah, ok. I’ve been using NX since it was still Unigraphics, so I am admittedly biased. I haven’t tried any of the newer things like Fusion or Sketchup. Might I ask what industry you use FreeCAD for at a professional level? Just curiosity. I’m automotive interiors tooling, so I’m pretty dependent on strong surfacing tools. Lots of A-surface stuff.
Also, how would you model this up in FreeCAD? This took me about 15 minutes in NX, with one sketch and some offset curves. I was making a 3D printed tag for my daughter.
I tried for over two hours in FreeCAD, but only got this far. I could not extrude individual bodies from one sketch, I had to make separate sketches for each shape. Offset curves didn’t appear to be a thing, and I couldn’t find any form of synchronous modeling tools. So, making those raised outlines was a whole other challenge. I ended up having to extrude a sheet taller than the main body, then thicken it. I couldn’t figure out how to select face edges for use in other commands, either. I ended up giving up.
I could go on for days about the problems with medical devices. I write software for one of those at my day job and as much as our team would love to port the software to something other than Windows, that would be a logistical nightmare.
The thunderbolt connection alone can break because of a thousand factors, even on the exact combination of hardware and operating system it was tested with. Processing of medical images is often very GPU-heavy which gives us the same problems as with CAD software.
Even if you get all the technical problems out of the way, medical devices need to be certified before you’re allowed to use them for diagnostics. This often includes an exact specification of the platform you run the software on. If you just take something that’s certified for “Windows 10 between 20H2 and 22H2, Intel or AMD CPU, device driver version 8.1.23” and try to run it on Wine, I would expect the American FDA, German TÜV and Chinese NMPA to fight over who gets to kick your door in first. It might be possible to get a certification for a Linux version but probably only for one specific combination of distribution, display server and desktop environment.
CAD options also flow over to the whole GPU debate as well. Yes, Nvidia’s company practices are awful. Yes, I’d love to have more options. But this doesn’t change that most of the heavyweight CAD options out there don’t play well with non-Nvidia GPUs.
I’d love it if there were FOSS / GPU-agnostic CAD options. But until then, focusing on what works is important, y’know?
That is 10,000% people who don’t do creative work especially professionally. I am fine with gimp and darktable versus anything Adobe/paid but I also barely use them lol. I would be back off Linux in a heartbeat if I honestly couldn’t use something I needed even though I prefer it.
Medical work, too. Several exam machines only work with Windows. I’ve heard once that “wine’s pretty good nowadays”, which completely ignores the detail that it isn’t tested with said equipment and its drivers.
Anything related to engineering, whether civil or mechanical, also goes with either Windows or Mac, because the free CAD options don’t hold a candle to AutoCAD and others.
Lastly, there’s no FOSS alternative to completely replace Microsoft Active Directory, so offices where 90% of the work is done on the web browser won’t bother because they’ll be losing control over individual machines.
There’s so much focus on “me” and “freedom” that they often forget there’s a whole damn world of different needs around them.
I agree with this, outside of bs windows throws if you change the motherboard. Desktop Linux stability reminds me of Windows 7 levels of OS stability. Great for most, not for mission critical.
With that said i feel you are being overtly critical to FOSS CAD software. I use FreeCAD in a professional setting and it is extremely stable, and for my use case it is as capable with no missing features. Yes the software isn’t beginner friendly, but I honestly found it made my designs more accurate since it had more constraints for sketches.
What were you using BEFORE FreeCAD if it has MORE sketch constraints?? Man, I found it so limiting compared to NX. Especially the sketching. And surfacing appeared to be basically nonexistent. Maybe I’m too spoiled with NX, but I dont think I could function for even a day on FreeCAD. It’s worse than SolidWorks (and I hate SolidWorks). I really, really wanted to like it. I even gave it a second chance when 1.0 dropped.
Fusion 360 and before that Google Sketchup
Ah, ok. I’ve been using NX since it was still Unigraphics, so I am admittedly biased. I haven’t tried any of the newer things like Fusion or Sketchup. Might I ask what industry you use FreeCAD for at a professional level? Just curiosity. I’m automotive interiors tooling, so I’m pretty dependent on strong surfacing tools. Lots of A-surface stuff.
Also, how would you model this up in FreeCAD? This took me about 15 minutes in NX, with one sketch and some offset curves. I was making a 3D printed tag for my daughter.
I tried for over two hours in FreeCAD, but only got this far. I could not extrude individual bodies from one sketch, I had to make separate sketches for each shape. Offset curves didn’t appear to be a thing, and I couldn’t find any form of synchronous modeling tools. So, making those raised outlines was a whole other challenge. I ended up having to extrude a sheet taller than the main body, then thicken it. I couldn’t figure out how to select face edges for use in other commands, either. I ended up giving up.
I could go on for days about the problems with medical devices. I write software for one of those at my day job and as much as our team would love to port the software to something other than Windows, that would be a logistical nightmare.
The thunderbolt connection alone can break because of a thousand factors, even on the exact combination of hardware and operating system it was tested with. Processing of medical images is often very GPU-heavy which gives us the same problems as with CAD software.
Even if you get all the technical problems out of the way, medical devices need to be certified before you’re allowed to use them for diagnostics. This often includes an exact specification of the platform you run the software on. If you just take something that’s certified for “Windows 10 between 20H2 and 22H2, Intel or AMD CPU, device driver version 8.1.23” and try to run it on Wine, I would expect the American FDA, German TÜV and Chinese NMPA to fight over who gets to kick your door in first. It might be possible to get a certification for a Linux version but probably only for one specific combination of distribution, display server and desktop environment.
CAD options also flow over to the whole GPU debate as well. Yes, Nvidia’s company practices are awful. Yes, I’d love to have more options. But this doesn’t change that most of the heavyweight CAD options out there don’t play well with non-Nvidia GPUs.
I’d love it if there were FOSS / GPU-agnostic CAD options. But until then, focusing on what works is important, y’know?