Don't hold your breath waiting. Linux accounts for what percentage of the O/S in the business world?
on the other hand the most powerful computers in the world run Linux
It would be great to have Inventor run on Linux.
How many sit on or beside desk-tops?
The three most expensive vehicle, combined have less the 50Km on them and haven't been driven for 20 years and are sitting parked out in the open ready for anyone to take for a drive or spin but yet in 20 years no one has.
Win8 will become the 4th vehicle in the parking lot.
Besides all of the nay say, here's another vote/wish/whatever that Autodesk works on Linux ports for more than what they've done so far, Inventor + AutoCAD should be ported over.
actually yes, there are tower servers that only support server operating systems.
Now adays they call them desktop supercomputers. 2 or 4 processors over 1TB of memory up to 4 GPU's or MIC (Quadro, Tesla, VGX, FirePro, Xeon Phi)
Not trying to get picky, but how many or what percentage of desk-tops run Linux. When we design and build something, before we go to the expense, when check and see what the possible sales will be.
It's not like in the movies of "Build it and they will come". There are alot more Apple O/S systems out there and you are finally seeing Autodesk ported over.
Indeed. Linux adoption has many different hurdles to overcome, like drivers. Its one of the biggest gripes I hear from various harware geeks who are otherwise obsessively proponents of the OS. One of them summed up the use of Linux rather nicely: best for those who do nothing, or those who want to do everything. The vast majority of engineering work environments fall into the middle ground where Windows and Mac (kind of) have the most benefits.
The ONLY reason that Linux is not the primary operating system on my work computer is that Autocad and Inventor are not available. Everything else I use runs linux. If I want to work from home, I have to run a virtual machine or dual boot if the drawing will be memory intensive, which gets annoying.
To argue market share of linux machines is assenine at best, when the availability of professional software is the only thing getting in the way of adopting linux for office environments.
Also - if business software was readily available - selling management on an OS that is more stable, more secure and free wouldn't exactly require a spreadsheet or pie chart. For that matter, we could convert all our drafting machines to linux even if the 'business types' stuck with windows or mac until it was time to upgrade.
It will be faster to teach a manager or salesmen to check e-mail and open a web browser in linux than gut the user interface on Windows 8.
It seems more like software companies simply won't be bothered. As long as linux users don't have another viable option, there is no risk of losing your business. As soon as a worthy competitor offers it though, they'll all jump on the band-wagon before the next major release.
This is logical, but dissapointing. It is also an opportunity to be the first to lead the way, and carve out a niche with linux users before a competitor does. If I have to learn solid works and pay minions to redraw legacy drawings because they ported to linux first, there is little chance I'll ever come back to autodesk. On the other hand, there is a good chance Solid-Works users feel the same way.
@Anonymous wrote:The ONLY reason that Linux is not the primary operating system on my work computer is that Autocad and Inventor are not available. Everything else I use runs linux. If I want to work from home, I have to run a virtual machine or dual boot if the drawing will be memory intensive, which gets annoying.
To argue market share of linux machines is assenine at best, when the availability of professional software is the only thing getting in the way of adopting linux for office environments.
Also - if business software was readily available - selling management on an OS that is more stable, more secure and free wouldn't exactly require a spreadsheet or pie chart. For that matter, we could convert all our drafting machines to linux even if the 'business types' stuck with windows or mac until it was time to upgrade.
It will be faster to teach a manager or salesmen to check e-mail and open a web browser in linux than gut the user interface on Windows 8.
It seems more like software companies simply won't be bothered. As long as linux users don't have another viable option, there is no risk of losing your business. As soon as a worthy competitor offers it though, they'll all jump on the band-wagon before the next major release.
This is logical, but dissapointing. It is also an opportunity to be the first to lead the way, and carve out a niche with linux users before a competitor does. If I have to learn solid works and pay minions to redraw legacy drawings because they ported to linux first, there is little chance I'll ever come back to autodesk. On the other hand, there is a good chance Solid-Works users feel the same way.
Okay, since talking market share is asinine, let's talk driver support.
Is there a Linux driver available for your printer? The answer is probably yes.
Was that driver made by HP (or Brother, Epson, Canon, Ricoh, Konica-Minolta, etc.)? The answer is ... no.
So, who made it, your CFO will ask.
This is the part where you tell him that the driver was made by some neckbeard living in his mom's basement, and the driver has not been tested or approved by the printer's manufacturer, and it hasn't been verified by any sort of QC team. Oh - the scanner and fax aren't actually supported yet, but the neckbeard (his name is dRaGoNfArT, by the way) is planning on adding that in the next release. Maybe the one after that.
So the CFO nods sagely, and then asks about warrantee support. Right now, you see, when he has a problem with his printer drivers, he can have a service rep from HP on-site within one hour (no kidding - that's in our service contract!) to fix it for him. Will dRaGoNfArT be able to provide this same level of service?
Well, no, you say. He lives somewhere in Alabama in his mom's basement, and doesn't have a car. Or maybe it was Istanbul? No, wait, it might have been Tbilisi. But no, he's not going to be here on-site within an hour to fix your problem.
This is the part where the CFO's face turns really red, and he tells you to get out of his office and never come back again.
Edit to add: ... and this was all before you even got the chance to talk about having to compile source code yourself!
Rusty
I have used a new HP printer on Linux, and a Samsung laser printer, and about a 15 yr old Canon. I downloaded a far superior driver for the Samsung (which came with a native Unix driver disk anyway), but CUPS supports just about everything.
My Nvidia GT card even has an ORIGINAL Linux driver.
There is nothing superior about original drivers, they were probably created by the biggest slacker in the factory who wasn't good enough for anything else.
P.S. I don't have a car.
P.S. I have a beard.
There used to be a linux/unix port of Autocad back in the early 90's and previously (I am not sure of the vintage, but it was available with release 9 if I recall correctly). Somewhere along the line, Autodesk got really chummy with Microsoft and moved all of their software onto Windows based OS's.
I would like to see open office support before I see a linux port.
I am underwhealmed by the logic. "I might not get telephone support for a printer that does not support linux - therefore Autodesk should not support linux."
I am equally unimpressed by the logic "Linux from 10 years ago was for people who know what they're doing." The only person I know compiling code is an engineer who does it as an intellectual excercise. The rest of us have lives and jobs. A lot has changed in the last decade, and new distributions are easier to get up and running than expensive alternatives. The newest distributions even bypass the 'shelf' entirely. They are free to download, easy to install, provide native support for most hardware and can be easily adapted to suit the needs of the user.
Software corperations are typically against open source software, and in some cases, rightfully afraid that open source offerings might eventually interfere with their own profits... or the profits of their cohorts. You can't exactly blame Microsoft, considering how much they make selling copies of MS Office every year. Apple certainly doesn't want people to realize that their OS is based off the same unix source code as most Linux distributions. (For that matter, Apple seems to avoid even acnowledging the existance of linux.) Then again, someone standing in line for the newest I-pad probably doesn't care.
The simple fact is that expensive operating systems and office software can be replaced (and often outperformed) by free open source software, but lets face it, Spreadsheets and Word Processing aren't exactly complex processes. On the other hand, professional packages for more complex tasks (like drafting)
have little or no competetion from open source offerings. What is available is so crude by comparison that it can't be used to efficiently generate profit. Like the guy standing in line for an I-pad, professionals just want something that works.
The choices for open source drafting are dismal. The design, engineering and programming that go into industrial and professional software packages are what set them apart, and the efficiency of being handed a finished package that is ready go to work are what businesses are happy to pay for. What they save on copies of MS Office and Windows 8 could be spent on a more complete Autodesk suite or extra seats of Inventor.
@Anonymous wrote:I am underwhealmed by the logic. "I might not get telephone support for a printer that does not support linux - therefore Autodesk should not support linux."
You're twisting this a little bit.
The logic runs more along the lines of "I won't get the same support* for Linux that I do for Windows, so I'm not going to adopt Linux for my company." Autodesk isn't going to plow development time and resources into a non-existant market, nor should they. It's pretty much the same reason that Ford isn't making a Mustang with oxygen-independent drive and a sealed pressurized cabin, on the off chance that they might have some customers on the moon for the 2015 model year. It's the same reason that my company isn't going to spend a quarter million dollars to design and build an injection mold for a one-off part.
Once the market exists, they'll expand into it ... but there has to be something there to justify the expenditure of resources.
*Also, you're twisting things about the level of support. For me and my company, it ain't phone support. I can have Dell / HP / Gateway / whoever actually on site within an hour of placing the call.
Rusty
Frankly, I'd settle for parallel processing. All these CAD programs are kludges of ancient code grafted together. They all use only one CPU except for a few 'modern' appendages. The day they can no longer sew new bits to the old corpse and re-write the programs from the top: then you'll get your Linux version. I'd run Linux, too; but the software isn't there for business...
Lets not forget the deliverables either. If the client is still running Inventor and contractually obligated the engineering company to provide Inventor files, it doesn't matter how cool, fast, or open-source the design software is if you can't deliver them.