Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Fri 1st Oct 2004 00:16 UTC
A senior IT executive at a major pharmaceutical company summed up the challenge for Linux at the ZDNet UK IT Priorities conference when he asked one simple question: what are the benefits in migrating from Microsoft to Linux at the desktop?
Permalink for comment
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
You are 100% correct. AutoCAD, SolidWorks, Inventor, SolidEdge, IronCAD, etc along with most other high end CAD (2D and 3D parametric modelers) only run on Windows. You may find a few extremely high end CAD apps that run also still run on some proprietary form of Unix, but are either unsupported on Linux or just won't run on Linux.
Pro/E will run under Linux and is supported, but now you're talking about a $10,000+ investement just for the application alone.
I'm sorry Linux zealots, but purchasing, supporting and maintaing these types of applications drawfs the very small cost of Windows, including administration. For the price of 1 seat of AutoCAD I can buy 26 seats of Windows XP Pro. Or let's talk about the $5,000 workstation I need to run SolidWorks, which itself is another $5,000. Or would you like to talk about FEA packages?
I like Linux, I use it from time to time. But if I can't have a good quality CAD application for a decent cost on Linux (sorry Pro/E and UG are just too dang expensive) I can't move off of Windows 100%. And no, running an application via WINE in a production environment doesn't cut it. Native ports only, IMO.