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0 pointsgjsman-10001y ago0 comments

I am chained to Windows (not the OP) all over the place.

CAD programs, e.g. SolidWorks, Alibre, SketchUp, eDrawings, Fusion 360? Windows.

CAM programs, e.g. BobCAM, MeshCAM, MasterCAM? Windows.

Office? Windows (LibreOffice is not a functional replacement - you can’t risk having documents being sent to clients looking bad).

FileMaker, Act! Pro, other desktop databases? Windows.

Router control software, e.g. Mach3, Mach4, UCCNC? Windows.

Adobe anything (GIMP is worse than a joke)? Or, if you don’t like Adobe, Affinity? Windows.

No shortage of Windows and Mac only programs in a business. Other than MasterCAM, my family uses or has used every piece of software I just listed in our small business. Linux is not an option; only for home hobbyist use, maybe. If you could get by with a Chromebook, Linux will work for you, otherwise it probably won’t. (This might sound like a slam, but remember Steam also runs on Chromebooks now.)

0 comments

bandrami1y ago

> you can’t risk having documents being sent to clients looking bad

So I have some terrible news for you about what happens if your client has an older version of Office than you do...

airstrike1y ago

Thanks for the answer! I have a follow up question, if you don't mind...

> Office? Windows (LibreOffice is not a functional replacement - you can’t risk having documents being sent to clients looking bad).

What kind of documents are you sending to clients? In my experience I would only share PDFs 99% of the time. So is your concern that the PDF will look unprofessional or that you need to send .docx or .xlsx or .pptx files to clients?

bowsamic1y ago

> Adobe anything (GIMP is worse than a joke)? Or, if you don’t like Adobe, Affinity? Windows.

They run on mac

NikkiA1y ago

Most of these will run in a VM just fine.

I have a barebones 'just installed' win10 image that I use to clone a new VM for each new app I add. Solidworks, NX, Cadence, Altium and ISE all work fine with no problems because of 3d acceleration or such.

Admitably my impetus for this was conflicting FlexLM emulators cough, but there's no reason it can't work just as a way of keeping things organised and clean on a host OS that isn't windows.

gjsman-1000OP1y ago

> Most of these will run in a VM just fine.

Emphatically, no. Running CAM, or CAD software, in a VM, is almost unusably slow with any large models. I’ve tried. It’s not fun to zoom through a large model at 5 FPS. You need to have GPU passthrough, and even though you can make that work, it’s very risky (hardly a stable sane thing to build a business on), and you’re just running Windows again, but worse. We need GPUs in Windows already (primarily NVIDIA) just to keep the CAD from being too slow, and to keep our rendering options open.

Even if it worked brilliantly in a VM (which it doesn’t), why would I double my operating systems and run them simultaneously? That’s just begging for compatibility issues, frustration, and defeats the point of avoiding Windows entirely. Any benefits for avoiding Windows are almost completely negated.

binarin1y ago

CAD is exactly what I'm using VMs with GPU passthrough for, and it's working briliantly there. The advantage is that most of these VMs have no internet access at all (they only see a single SMB share on the host) - so most of the security and privacy issues are just non-existent.

nine_k1y ago

Running Windows in a VM us still running Windows.

I would consider Wine instead, or Proton. It may work really well with some software, but may have trouble with other software.

eitally1y ago

Wine won't work with a lot of the enterprisy stuff that also requires license servers, etc.

Besides the design stuff, the entire manufacturing industry is dependent on Microsoft. There are thousands -- probably hundreds of thousands -- of air-gapped NT4 machines in factories running very specific but unsupported for 20 years software, for example. All the big MES systems, test software, and various tooling to run factories are all designed for Windows only.

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rkagerer1y ago

Wish it worked with SolidWorks. Their compatibility page for that application is mostly "Garbage" rankings.

thot_experiment1y ago

You can with a tremendous amount of effort create a brittle config that will run some of that software acceptably, especially if you're sailing the high seas. In a real world situation it's an absolute no-go.

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