DOES AUTODESK FUSION 360 SUPPORT LINUX OS

[Anonymous]

HELLO 

I WOULD LIKE TO DOES AUTODESK FUSION 360 SUPPORT LINUX OS

AND 

WHICH WOULD BE THE BEST PROCSSER FOR FUSION IF I AM HANDELING LARGE CAM AND COMPLEX 3D ASSEMLY

LET ME KNOW

[Anonymous]

Actually millions of people are using Linux without knowing it. Android uses a linux kernel. The company where I work makes millions of dollars with Linux in the marine and automotive industry.

The only real competitor to Linux in the embedded world is QNX. For servers some proprietary UNIX are still major players but windows doesn’t exist in that world. Microsoft chose to switch to Linux for their embedded business.
In the Phone industry there are two major players, Apple with their IOS and misc companies with Android. Windows was crushed in that industry.


If you are talking about desktop then the Mac and Windows are used more because there is no money to make on Linux as people don’t want to pay for software when they can get it for free.
For those of us who use Linux and would like to have proprietary programs available, we are often infuriated because we feel that Linux is the best system but the industry goes where the money is. As for me I bought a MAC to resolve the issue.
Most of my work is still on Linux except when I need to do CAD. I got plenty of space in my lab so having both Linux and Mac is not an issue for me.

[cekuhnen]

@Anonymous

In your first part you make a reference to areas that are industry specific and not part of the typical 2D 3D Word Processing gaming world.

I don't think that it is correct to think that there is no market for commercial application with Linux.

Look at macOS.

What makes macOS different from Ubuntu etc? Stuff just works. Just works is not something that is commonly associated with Linux hence it never went mainstream like macOS or Windows as the two major OS.

People want to run their computer and not having to tinker with it like crazy.

For an advanced Linux user the problems are tiny for normal GI Joe users the problems are reasons not to use Linux.

Sad is sadly the truth about Linux and a year to two ago was a very interesting article online where basically the industry agreed on that with their fragmentation and everybody gets a special wish they totally developed besides what consumers actually want.

[daniel_lyall]

True but when it comes to makeing money millions does not cut it at all, some programs use a Linux base for the cheap real time system, windows and apple have them as well at a massive cost. Would fusion work better under Linux yes and no as long as the correct type of driver available, iron core to name one There are a lot of if it can work on apple it can easily be converted to Linux as of now there is no one willing to prove it.

[lichtzeichenanlage]

Ouch...

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@daniel_lyall wrote:

@jeromenowe ... if you think about it how many people use Linux, Linux + user's = $ ...

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[cekuhnen]

@daniel_lyall In the past time Linux was used for computation but in recent time the Windows compilers got much better removing the speed difference.

freecad to Name on is available on all platforms by the way and I am sure in factories oversees machine software runs on non-windows systems too. It is not that I am against Linux - they just sadly did not manage to understand what is important to get out of the nerd and free os philosophy corner.

[Anonymous]

Its a catch 22 at the end of the day.

Companies don't port their products to Linux because not a lot of people use Linux. Not a lot of people use the platform, because software they need isn't available on the platform.

I do hope that Valve can bump up the market share. Maybe then we can get rid of some of the stigma associated with Linux to a degree.

[daniel_lyall]

The Linux trolls need to pull there neck in and stop abuseing people for asking a question that they say they can not find a answer to most times it is a yes no question. 

The amount of Linux user's would go up if the Linux trolls stoped being trolls, it is worse when you get trolled for saying something is in Linux and they say it is and it is something you are using.

[cekuhnen]

@Anonymous

Valve does a pretty good job but I think it will at this point not have much weight anymore.

Not to be pessimistic - I am with linux since 2000 but nothing much changed.

It is really a pitty. Win10 finally matured in some areas but still is border line shocking in basic tasks like moving and deleting files - where other OS do it fast Win crawls.

Ah well consumer have spoken

[brianrepp · Accepted solution]

All - not trying to stop the discussion here about operating systems, but since there were a few recent comments about the future of Fusion 360 on Linux, I wanted to chime in and reiterate that we still have no plans to support Linux.  It may not be what some want to hear, but it's where we're at today.

For those that haven't seen it, there is an archived Ideastation post HERE with a lot of discussion on the topic, including some comments from the Autodesk team.

[kjay.moa]

do autodesk have a voting "thing" there is lots of things i would love to see in F360 like what can't i use the tab ?! or why can't you guys make a port for linux :'( it is ennoying to say the least that i can't use a secure, friendly, fast and very stable os. that doesn't get slow if you fill it up with cat videos 😉  for crying out loud. the best ideas comes from crowds. not individuals.. 

I have read that you are not planing on it. but i have been in the CAD "business" for years. and i have never ben a fanboy of your products or SW but i am now. i have even followed you guys on youtube and i hugly love your pricing and F360 and i know when i start my own company again. i will glady pay. but it's so sad to see you are supporting makers and hobbiest and maker spaces. (which builds on the idea of sharing is caring) 

See my wife just got a charger for free today from a company (in DK) she was so happy about it, and i most say i wanted to support this company over a lot of other once because they got me emotionally happy. they may have lost 5 min of time, and a small amount of cash. but she allready told 2 of her friends about it. and i'm almost sure she will tell it to one group on facebook. and in this day and age, infomation sharing is so huge we need AI and big data to even rap our heads around it. 
and yeah you guys will not make huge money of a Linux port BUT you will tell the world and SW that you guys are serious and understand markets and that you are aiming big and have a rock solid product that runs on everything.! i'm rooting for you as you can clearly hear 😉  Plus you could proberly get a comunity the help with the upkeep. 🙂

please don't qoute my english it's not my first language 😉 

[lichtzeichenanlage]

Can anybody close this painful thread?

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@kjay.moa wrote:

do autodesk have a voting "thing" there is lots of things i would love to see in F360... 

---

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-ideastation/idb-p/125

[Anonymous]

Searching for info how to use Fusion360 on Linux I stumbled over this insane thread.

It is always the same. Somebody asks politely for Linux support and all the
Linux haters start another flame war about about what OS is better. Normally
without having any Linux experience. Please respect that people have different
opinions.

I just want to talk about technical problems and solutions. I'm developer and
in my company we also develop cross-platform tools using C++ and Qt library.
These tools work on Windows and Linux, it's just a matter of cross-compiling.
It could work on Mac OS X too, and on every other OS which is supported by Qt
(QNX, FreeBSD, etc.). We just have no interest in OS X, because we don't have
any customer which works on that Apple OS (industrial automation area).

I'm not sure, but I believe Fusion360 is also based on Qt libraries,
hence it works on Windows, Mac, and would most likely also work on Linux.

If you design your application portable this is just a matter of cross-compiling,
there is no reason to port anything, except for some rare corner cases.

So why is there no Linux version?

Typical reasons are:

* the management sees not enough customers here. It's a question about cost/income ratio.
- I think if done right, there are not much costs (keyword continuous integration)
- Number of potential customers. Linux users need to raise there hand and write to Autodesk,
so that they can see, there are potential customers. Linux leads already on the server market,
and on embedded devices, smart phones and tablets (if you count Android as Linux).
On the desktop Windows is still the dominating system (88%), Mac (9%), Linux (2%).
But this is for the average user, this doesn't need to be true for engineers and makers using CAD software.
I have no statistic here, but I personally have never seen engineers working on Mac.
But I have seen many engineers, software developers and scientists that work on Linux.
* Linux binary compatibility issues: There is not one Linux, there are many Linux distributions,
which are not binary compatible. It is a lot of work to build and test for many different Linux flavours.
There have been different solutions for this problem over the years, but AppImage seems to best and simplest solution today. See https://appimage.org/
We also use this in my company. Cura, the 3d printer slicing software uses it, and many other software is distributed as AppImage.
AppImage containers are comparable to DMG files on Mac from the user point of view. Simply download it, make it executable and run it.
No installation. If you don't want it anymore, just remove that file.
* Graphics card driver issues: Game developers had it hard for a long time on Linux. MS Direct3d code only works on Windows.
OpenGL code is portable, but not all drivers support all features. Vendors like NVidia didn't open any specs,
so the Linux developers needed to reverse engineer...but that's another story.
Anyway, for most 3D tools today the drivers are OK. Cura, OpenSCAD, FreeCAD, Slic3r, Browsers, etc. All these tools support3D views, and this works even on Intel on board graphics on Linux. The requirements are not as high as for modern games, where you your always need the latest NVidia card.
So this should not be a real issue for Fusion360.
* Testing: every supported system needs to be tested, which costs money.
To solution to this is test automation. Unit tests which get executed on check-in (Continuous Integration),
automated GUI test with tools like Squish.
* Support: More customers, more support. And you need personnel with Linux know-how, which is maybe not there today.
From the application usage this should be the same as before, because this is OS independent. But there may be new installation issues.
Solution: I think most Linux users can live without support. A Beta version is better than nothing.
Linux users are normally good in solving issues, and the community helps each other.
* Equipment costs: Actually, this is not in issue, because here Linux is the clear winner. Linux works on every PC. All the software is for free: The OS, compilers, IDEs, static code analyzers, fuzzy testing tools, Docker virtualization, git version control system, etc.
For Windows your need licenses for the OS, Visual Studio, etc.
For Mac OS X you also need to buy the expensive Apple hardware.
For this reason Linux is such an interesting platform for developers. I know companies, where the developers develop there software on Linux even though they are targeting Windows.

I hope I could give some insight in building and distributing Linux applications. I doubt this will change anything, but at least I tried it. Anyway I would prefer a native application over any web based solution, like the most people.

It works better, more fluent, without internet connection. And I can keep may designs private and don't get forced to store this in any cloud.

Final note on Mac OS X for all the Linux haters: Apple gave up developing their own OS with Mac OS X, which was a good decision. It uses a Mach Kernel which comes from the Unix world. It has more in common with a Linux kernel, than with Windows. All the command line tools are the same GNU tools like on Linux. So are services like the SSH daemon. The print system is CUPS (Common Unix Print System), that comes from the Linux world. The browser is a fork from KDE's Konqueror, which is also a Linux tool.  On the Mac your also have SAMBA and NFS,  and many more Linux tools. Just the GUI uses their own framework, which is based on ancient NEXTSTEP and Objective-C. So at the end Mac OS X is 50% Linux 🙂 Indeed you can even install an X server on Mac OS X and run all kinds of Linux tools there too (I did this because so many good Linux tools are missing on a Mac).
And if Apple would decide to use the Linux kernel as their OS core, users wouldn't recognize this, like people normally don't know that a Linux kernel is running in the Android device.

[TheCADWhisperer]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

...without internet connection. And I can keep may designs private and don't get forced to store this in any cloud.

---

Uhmmm, have you done any research on this topic?

[daniel_lyall]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Searching for info how to use Fusion360 on Linux I stumbled over this insane thread.

It is always the same. Somebody asks politely for Linux support and all the
Linux haters start another flame war about about what OS is better. Normally
without having any Linux experience. Please respect that people have different
opinions.

I just want to talk about technical problems and solutions. I'm developer and
in my company we also develop cross-platform tools using C++ and Qt library.
These tools work on Windows and Linux, it's just a matter of cross-compiling.
It could work on Mac OS X too, and on every other OS which is supported by Qt
(QNX, FreeBSD, etc.). We just have no interest in OS X, because we don't have
any customer which works on that Apple OS (industrial automation area).

I'm not sure, but I believe Fusion360 is also based on Qt libraries,
hence it works on Windows, Mac, and would most likely also work on Linux.

If you design your application portable this is just a matter of cross-compiling,
there is no reason to port anything, except for some rare corner cases.

So why is there no Linux version?

Typical reasons are

* the management sees not enough customers here. It's a question about cost/income ratio. This here is the killer

- I think if done right, there are not much costs (keyword continuous integration)
- Number of potential customers. Linux users need to raise there hand and write to Autodesk,
so that they can see, there are potential customers. Linux leads already on the server market,
and on embedded devices, smart phones and tablets (if you count Android as Linux).

On the desktop Windows is still the dominating system (88%), Mac (9%), Linux (2%). Again idea dead

But this is for the average user, this doesn't need to be true for engineers and makers using CAD software.
I have no statistic here, but I personally have never seen engineers working on Mac.
But I have seen many engineers, software developers and scientists that work on Linux.
* Linux binary compatibility issues: There is not one Linux, there are many Linux distributions,
which are not binary compatible. It is a lot of work to build and test for many different Linux flavours.
There have been different solutions for this problem over the years, but AppImage seems to best and simplest solution today. See https://appimage.org/
We also use this in my company. Cura, the 3d printer slicing software uses it, and many other software is distributed as AppImage.
AppImage containers are comparable to DMG files on Mac from the user point of view. Simply download it, make it executable and run it.
No installation. If you don't want it anymore, just remove that file.
* Graphics card driver issues: Game developers had it hard for a long time on Linux. MS Direct3d code only works on Windows.
OpenGL code is portable, but not all drivers support all features. Vendors like NVidia didn't open any specs,
so the Linux developers needed to reverse engineer...but that's another story.
Anyway, for most 3D tools today the drivers are OK. Cura, OpenSCAD, FreeCAD, Slic3r, Browsers, etc. All these tools support3D views, and this works even on Intel on board graphics on Linux. The requirements are not as high as for modern games, where you your always need the latest NVidia card.
So this should not be a real issue for Fusion360.
* Testing: every supported system needs to be tested, which costs money.
To solution to this is test automation. Unit tests which get executed on check-in (Continuous Integration),
automated GUI test with tools like Squish.
* Support: More customers, more support. And you need personnel with Linux know-how, which is maybe not there today.
From the application usage this should be the same as before, because this is OS independent. But there may be new installation issues.
Solution: I think most Linux users can live without support. A Beta version is better than nothing.
Linux users are normally good in solving issues, and the community helps each other.
* Equipment costs: Actually, this is not in issue, because here Linux is the clear winner. Linux works on every PC. All the software is for free: The OS, compilers, IDEs, static code analyzers, fuzzy testing tools, Docker virtualization, git version control system, etc.
For Windows your need licenses for the OS, Visual Studio, etc.
For Mac OS X you also need to buy the expensive Apple hardware.
For this reason Linux is such an interesting platform for developers. I know companies, where the developers develop there software on Linux even though they are targeting Windows.

I hope I could give some insight in building and distributing Linux applications. I doubt this will change anything, but at least I tried it. Anyway I would prefer a native application over any web based solution, like the most people.

It works better, more fluent, without internet connection. And I can keep may designs private and don't get forced to store this in any cloud.

Final note on Mac OS X for all the Linux haters: Apple gave up developing their own OS with Mac OS X, which was a good decision. It uses a Mach Kernel which comes from the Unix world. It has more in common with a Linux kernel, than with Windows. All the command line tools are the same GNU tools like on Linux. So are services like the SSH daemon. The print system is CUPS (Common Unix Print System), that comes from the Linux world. The browser is a fork from KDE's Konqueror, which is also a Linux tool.  On the Mac your also have SAMBA and NFS,  and many more Linux tools. Just the GUI uses their own framework, which is based on ancient NEXTSTEP and Objective-C. So at the end Mac OS X is 50% Linux 🙂 Indeed you can even install an X server on Mac OS X and run all kinds of Linux tools there too (I did this because so many good Linux tools are missing on a Mac).
And if Apple would decide to use the Linux kernel as their OS core, users wouldn't recognize this, like people normally don't know that a Linux kernel is running in the Android device.

---

[jeromenowe]

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@daniel_lyall wrote:

@jeromenowe there are good and bad points to using Linux, but if you think about it how many people use Linux, Linux + user's = $ 

And no they will not do a open source version of fusion for Linuxs that is out right a stupid thing to do. All so dev on 3 OS = slow updates and upgrades.

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They're not obliged to do an open source version of Fusion 360. But they can develop a paid or student version for Linux as it exists for WindowsBSOD and MacO$.

[jeromenowe]

---

@brianrepp wrote:

All - not trying to stop the discussion here about operating systems, but since there were a few recent comments about the future of Fusion 360 on Linux, I wanted to chime in and reiterate that we still have no plans to support Linux.  It may not be what some want to hear, but it's where we're at today.

For those that haven't seen it, there is an archived Ideastation post HERE with a lot of discussion on the topic, including some comments from the Autodesk team.

---

It's a question of time but you'll be "forced" to develop it  for Linux

And it wont be a poor browser version.

[TrippyLighting]

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@jeromenowe wrote:

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@brianrepp wrote:

All - not trying to stop the discussion here about operating systems, but since there were a few recent comments about the future of Fusion 360 on Linux, I wanted to chime in and reiterate that we still have no plans to support Linux.  It may not be what some want to hear, but it's where we're at today.

For those that haven't seen it, there is an archived Ideastation post HERE with a lot of discussion on the topic, including some comments from the Autodesk team.

---

It's a question of time but you'll be "forced" to develop it  for Linux

And it wont be a poor browser version.

---

Really, is that so ? Can you elaborate ?

[lichtzeichenanlage]

@TrippyLighting: But that's so obvious. Microsoft is working hard to make companies lose confidence in Windows 10, Apple is to expensive and doesn't understand the needs of companies, ChromeOS is just another Linux... and after 25 years Linux will start to conquer the desktops like nothing. 

So obvious - wondering that you can't see that 😉

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@lichtzeichenanlage wrote:

So obvious - wondering that you can't see that 😉

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Given this is so obvious - I am sure Parametric Technology Corporation is working on a solution.

They are experts in finding and tracking the pulse of MCAD and Operating Systems.

Q1. How much of a premium are you willing to pay for a solution?