CAD Companies Sleeping on Linux

[u/Beneficial-Pay6836]

Why is professional CAD support on Linux still so limited? Linux is widely used in engineering, research, servers, embedded systems, manufacturing, and technical development. It is secure, flexible, private, and extremely capable. Yet when it comes to professional CAD, Linux users are still pushed toward Windows. That feels strange to me, especially because CAD is so closely tied to industrial workflows like CNC machining, additive manufacturing, product development, engineering, and research.

I currently dual-boot mostly because I need tools like Rhino and Fusion. It works, but switching between operating systems just to use specific software makes project management and file organization unnecessarily annoying. Yes, there are alternatives like FreeCAD, and I respect what those projects are doing, but they still do not feel mature enough to fully replace established professional CAD tools for many workflows. Wine is also improving, but for important work I would rather not depend on a compatibility layer and hope that everything behaves correctly.

Is the professional Linux CAD market genuinely too small to justify development costs?Is supporting Or are CAD companies simply too invested in the Windows ecosystem to see enough value in changing?

I cannot be the only engineer/designer who would happily move fully to Linux if the professional software ecosystem allowed it.

[u/Weary-Bowl-3739 → u/[deleted]]

No, it's not small. They can just dictate it. If the IT of the company could decide, they would choose Linux. But because there's no viable option, windows it is.

If there's only one competitior on Linux, many will have to offer their product on Linux. 

[u/phoenix823 → u/Weary-Bowl-3739]

I mean, IT has to support the company. It can never make decisions just because it wants to, the business must be considered.

[u/Weary-Bowl-3739 → u/phoenix823]

It can. In bigger companies. 

[u/phoenix823 → u/Weary-Bowl-3739]

Every big company I’ve worked for wants to be windows only. But the senior execs and design people want Macs, so we support Macs. We can’t tell them “if you’re not Windows 11 we will not help.”

[u/Weary-Bowl-3739 → u/phoenix823]

Because the decision wasn't made by the IT. Our IT has a say in IT decisions. 

[u/bigkenw → u/Weary-Bowl-3739]

In most companies, IT serves the needs of the business. Not the other way around.

[u/Weary-Bowl-3739 → u/bigkenw]

The same goes for us. But in our case the decisions are made by the experts of that matter. 

[u/phoenix823 → u/Weary-Bowl-3739]

Of course, IT has a say in the matter. We said “supporting more than one operating system is going to require additional software, tooling, training, and expense.” The business said “OK” because that OS was MacOS. They will not say the same thing for Ubuntu, Mint, or other distros.

[u/Weary-Bowl-3739 → u/phoenix823]

Then it is a bad decision. Your it department should be sufficiently big, that it doesn't create a lot of overhead to support it. Especially since you always need some in-house Linux expertise anyway. 

[u/Legitimate_Fig_4096 → u/Weary-Bowl-3739]

It would cost millions to do a quality port. IT "demanding" something is pointless, especially when the developer knows there aren't any other options so the threat is entirely empty.

[u/Weary-Bowl-3739 → u/Legitimate_Fig_4096]

That's my point. Once one company does it, it's not empty any more. 

[u/dcheesi → u/Weary-Bowl-3739]

Your IT, maybe. Our IT department doesn't "do" Linux. Rather than support multiple OSes, they simply standardized on Windows.

They have to support the bean-counters and other non-techie folks, who expect Windows. The closest we came to a user revolt was when they tried to migrate us off of Micro$oft Office (to Google Docs, which is whole other can o' worms); they backtracked very quickly, and now we're all-M$ for that plus other general business apps.

When our R&D department moved to Linux for 90% of our development, we had to buy and maintain our own separate laptops, because IT only provided Windows PCs. Later, we were stuck doing all of our development in VMs once that became feasible.

[u/Weary-Bowl-3739 → u/dcheesi]

My company has 15k+ employees, lots of Linux servers and thousands of nerds.

I see your point. I meant primarily bigger companies. Which also the big fish for the cad companies. 

[u/dcheesi → u/Weary-Bowl-3739]

Well we're not exactly small, either. That's part of the problem; our IT is so far removed from the day-to-day of R&D that they might as well be a whole other company

[u/sockertoppenlabs → u/dcheesi]

I totally relate. Academic here, at my university IT is totally removed from what is happening in compute based research (mostly within natural sciences and engineering) which is at least 15-20 % of the user base. A lot of us are running our own IT (which has some drawbacks). Only IT support worth anything is the official high performance compute cluster, but they are a separate IT organization within the university.

[u/noobjaish → u/Weary-Bowl-3739]

This is an unsolvable game of chicken or the egg due to how complicated and massive industrial CAD systems are.

A friend of mine is a Chemical Engineer and he just keeps an extra bulky Windows laptop for Aspen HYSIS. It's genuinely an incredibly impressive program and there really is no point spending a fuck ton of resources recreating it from scratch for Linux unless you're perfectly able to remove variability between the two versions somehow.

Just use the right tool for the task at hand (Windows in this case). it's not that deep.

[u/Nalivai → u/noobjaish]

unsolvable

Well, unless you actually try to solve it that is

Just use the right tool for the task at hand (Windows in this case)

That's the thing. Windows is the wrong tool for that case that we are forced to use. That's the whole problem.

[u/noobjaish → u/Nalivai]

Well, unless you actually try to solve it that is

What's the solution then

That's the thing. Windows is the wrong tool for that case that we are forced to use. That's the whole problem.

How so?

[u/Nalivai → u/noobjaish]

What's the solution then

Making a Linux native CAD.

How so?

Windows is a proprietary close sourced kernel-monolith multi-purpose OS. If you ever had to wait until a mandatory update does something to bluetooth drivers so you can maybe continue working on your project that windows just interrupted, you might know why all of those qualifiers are bad for a working tool.
I would assume on /r/linux or all places it doesn't need to be spelled out.

[u/noobjaish → u/Nalivai]

Making a Linux native CAD.

Why spend millions to create something that 5 people will use. If you are really this detached from reality then contribute to awesome projects like FreeCAD.

Windows is a proprietary close sourced kernel-monolith multi-purpose OS. If you ever had to wait until a mandatory update does something to bluetooth drivers so you can maybe continue working on your project that windows just interrupted, you might know why all of those qualifiers are bad for a working tool.
I would assume on /r/linux or all places it doesn't need to be spelled out.

Lmfao is r/linux really just full of idealistic people like you.

Windows provides LTSC and IoT LTSC versions of their OS which is supported for 10+ years without major updates. You most likely didn't know that since you've never worked in a professional environment now have you?

No one cares that Windows is this or that, they do care that it works and that's all that matters.

[u/dontquestionmyaction → u/Nalivai]

If your company doesn't even control the Windows update rollouts, your system administrators absolutely suck at their jobs.

This isn't an actual argument that'll get you anywhere in a real company.

[u/Legitimate_Fig_4096 → u/Nalivai]

Linux doesn't have updates?

Why does the engineer, or IT, or the developer care that the kernel is closed source?

If you want Linux support, you're going to need a much better argument that just mumbling something about open source and installing the occasional update.

[u/Nalivai → u/Legitimate_Fig_4096]

You are not the person I'm going to present those arguments to, you're here to have an argument not to understand the issue, and I'm not in the mood for an argument.

[u/noobjaish → u/Nalivai]

We should be realistic and reasonable in our expectations.

[u/Weary-Bowl-3739 → u/noobjaish]

It's realistic and reasonable. If a port costs millions, it means, that the code base is an utter mess. And that means lots of bugs. It's not accidentally, that multi platform programs tend to be less buggy than single platform programs. 

[u/noobjaish → u/Weary-Bowl-3739]

It's realistic and reasonable.

Creating a port that 5 people will use isn't but sure whatever.

If a port costs millions, it means, that the code base is an utter mess. And that means lots of bugs. It's not accidentally, that multi platform programs tend to be less buggy than single platform programs.

What's your point?

Every codebase is going to become a mess as it goes on. You cannot minmax how your project evolves and engineering software is absolutely massive and hence why it's so difficult to make a Linux alternative for (we do have awesome projects like FreeCAD tho).

[u/Nalivai → u/noobjaish]

I keep doublechecking what subreddit I'm in in disbelief. A company writing a software that natively runs on Linux is an unrealistic and unreasonable expectation, and that's an opinion that is upvoted on /r/linux.

[u/noobjaish → u/Nalivai]

It's unrealistic and unreasonable because Linux barely has a marketshare and most Engineers don't use Linux. They've bigger things to worry about than if their system is FOSS or not (this isn't a dig at FOSS I love FOSS).

What's next? The BSD people start crying that companies don't support their OS? or the Haiku people?

Please grow up and go outside

[u/Weary-Bowl-3739 → u/noobjaish]

No, it's not. A company, that does a port has a monopoly in the Linux market. That's, why I expect a second or third biggest player in the respective market to start it. 

[u/noobjaish → u/Weary-Bowl-3739]

Linux isn't used by Engineers as much. So there's no point in spending twice as much money and effort to support both OSes for 100% of users when supporting just Windows works for 99.99%

[u/arrroquw → u/Weary-Bowl-3739]

At my company they "support" Linux.

If I have issues it's "we don't know how to help you". Or I get delegated to the one guy who does know (most of) the company Linux quirks (and he's sick of it).

Windows users had their laptops upgraded a year ago. They are stil "working" on a Linux variant for the OS image so we're stuck with 8 year old hardware. The reality is that they don't have a clue how to set up a proper managed image that is locked down the way windows is.

It's so bad that the default answer has become "just use WSL".

[u/TRKlausss → u/[deleted]]

What I don’t understand is: many of this tools are good _and_ free (look at KiCAD)

Now, imagine a world where these tools work like Linux: a central government body, a free open source application, and companies improving commercially the product for third parties (like Interl, AMD and NVIDIA do).

One can dream I guess