Thread: Linux Vixta

Originally Posted by Dougal

No I haven't, but others have tried Wine, VMware and others without success.
There are people with far more expertise in this area than me working on it, hopefully they'll be really vocal when they find a solution.

Or even better if solidworks writes a linux version and let me transfer my new $20k license across.

$20K license?


I've been playing with Linux since the days of 486's.

Wine can get me twitter and bisted still.


And IF, a Linux GPL'd version of Solidworks, WAS ever released it would be freeware. All Linux is GPL.
By international law. GPL (General Public License) states they MUST release the source code for public scrutiny. Must.

Isn't that lovely? Hmmm?

The reason it wont work mate, is that, it is as "locked down proprietary code" as MS Windows is.
And they will go to hell, before they release their code for public use.
It's what makes their wages, they are not going to give that up.

So Wine, most probably, never will handle the Solidworks DLL's required.
Nor will anything else, but Windows.
I'll lay a bet, that they use licensed, undocumented MS DLL's in their code, and MS contract forbids any disclosure.


Oh, by the way. Has anybody else had fun logging out of Vixta?

The only way I've found is to open a terminal and su, then give the unix shutdown string.


Isn't that fun!

Originally Posted by shorty943

And IF, a Linux GPL'd version of Solidworks, WAS ever released it would be freeware. All Linux is GPL.
By international law. GPL (General Public License) states they MUST release the source code for public scrutiny. Must.

Ummm no, that's not exactly correct.

You can quite happily release something for linux that isn't GPL, I know many companies that do (including the likes of IBM, Intel, Dell, etc. etc.)

If you use GPL code you must release that code to the general public, but there's nothing saying you have to release all of your non-GPL code to the general public.

If you write something from scratch and don't use any GPL code then you can just release a binary distribution, no need to release any of your code.

Problem with releasing binary distributions for linux is there's too many flavours to try and support. Some companies get around this by only supporting a few flavours, most just don't bother. As you say the code is the livelihood of the company and it's employees, they can't afford to release it and possibly have an instant open-source competitor that, whilst doesn't do everything they can do, does enough to put them out of business.

Open source is a great philosophy - for university students, people still living at home and people with too much spare time on their hands.
For a coder not in the above categories it generally doesn't pay the bills.

P.S. This is not a personal attack on anyone so I don't expect one back, I am just stating my opinion from experience within the industry.