your choice.
Tell us, what do you mainly use windows for?
I know you have driver problems with Linux… that is another reason people might reject Linux
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And that is why ny last PC I put together is running W11 instead of Gentoo!! Even Gentoo was having issues with my old Nvidia GT430 GPU, Windows is having no issues what so ever!!!
Does that mean I favor Windows over Linux, NO, it just means Windows is doing a better job of running the hardware I have.
Why don’t some, whom are, posting, how great Linux is, go back and cut their teeth on say Arch or maybe Gentoo and heaven forbid LFS!!! They just might learn on just what it takes to build Linux!!!
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Think for some the CAD, Adobe photoshop, lightroom and accounting software are big issues to not convert. Although equivalent tools exist they are not good enough. But for most home users its not a big jump
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I recommend it. I have replaced have of my W11 install apps of it with WSL apps and I can even use Flatpak!!
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I saw a post the other day (sorry - don’t have the URL) by a professional photographer who’s managed to drop Adobe LightRoom and started using RawTherapee instead…
That’s not the answer for everyone - and graphic designers who’ve been using Mac (or Windows even) with the Adobe “Creative Suite”, are kinda trapped - as they only know that workflow (and their neuro-plasticity cannot cope with drastic change)… And yeah - Autocad is Windows only - that’s the industry standard…
I never really used Adobe Illustrator, did most of my vector line drawing in CorelDraw up till around 10 years ago… But was able to switch to InkScape and I prefer it to CorelDraw now - when InkScape 1.2 got the multiple page feature - it was level peg with CorelDraw! IMHO
I remember when I used to use Photoshop (~20 years ago?) - I found it easier to use than GIMP. But if I need to directly edit raster stuff these days, GIMP has everything I need… But I’m not a professional graphic designer, so unable to comment whether or not GIMP is up to Photoshop Feature for Feature…
Pretty sure the Video editing features available as OpenSource are just as good (or better) than Adobe Premiere and After Effects…
And Blender is rapidly eating into the marketshare of stuff like Autodesk 3DS Max and Maya? (Maya was originally owned by Silicon Graphics, they sold it to Autodesk) and others… There were other products in that field, that I never hear about any more - like “SoftImage” which was only on UNIX, then it got ported to Windows NT and Microsoft bought it - then they sold it to Autodesk - and it’s been discontinued… And there was Lightscape originally developed on Amiga…
Found the URL :
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Adobe products really tie you in, once you start its very difficult to stop or change.
I did all my web site building using dreamweaver, (on windows) starting in around 1999 and still have a computer with 32 bit version of linux mint 19 which comes out once a month to do updates on the 3 sites I still manage. I run it through wine. The version MX is no longer available and have never found a suitable replacement.
All my new sites use wordpress which is much quicker and easy to use, but does not offer the same feature to allow me to conver my older sites, also the old sites have around a 100 pages on them so would be a big job to change each page which would be hard to pass the cost off to the clients. They are talking of retirment so when they stop so will my need for dreamweaver.
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Count me please to that company too 
Yes, I’m paid to advertise Linux, especially Debian.
Guess where my payment comes from?
Since I don’t need Windows, I spend the fraction of the money to new hardware.
As I still do, like I buy another SSD or add more RAM, change CPU etc., I can’t tell I dont’t buy newer stuff.
But I’m not forced to do these purchases.
I won’t tell my story again, but Windows constantly messed with me.
Since I’m on Linux, I don’t need to have the newest shiniest most expensive anything, because my computer lacks a massive demanding resource hog: Windows.
So may payment for advertising Linux is the amount of money, that I do not spend.
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I already mentioned some valid excuses 
The common point is that a special software is needed with a specific feature set which is not available on Linux. Still, I think this is the vast minority.
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So could some developer please come up with a Linux distro that has Windows with all that CAD, etc stuff installed and working properly in a VM?
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I doubt this would be solution. Just a workaround, because that still involves Windows.
The real solution would be to port the CAD software to Linux.
The author of that CAD is not going to do it, because Linux is not widespread enough in that field. Linux cannot spread in that field, because lacking the special software.
Typical Catch 22.
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Well is there some way of porting software to linux without having access to the source code? I know WINE tries to do that. It cant be impossible… all you need to provide is some windows system calls, and deal with a different binary format.
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No WINE is not porting, it is just a compatibility layer between Linux and Windows.
It tries to mimic Windows behavior on Linux towards the Windows application.
But it is far from perfect, as it relies on lots of reverse engeneering.
AFAIK exactly that is what WINE does. The problem is where it behaves a little bit different than the real Windows. The application depending on that will not work then, or will just work buggy.
I don’t think so.
One possible way is to choose a crossplatform solution instead of the Windows-only software. Even if it would have a Mac port, that would mean the app is indeed crossplatform, and is designed that way. Like Photoshop: it is crossplatfrom already, but omits a Linux port.
In such a case it just needs intention from the developer to port to Linux too.
See Davinci Resolve!
There are cases, where the app highly depends on Windows specific API layer, such as Vmix. Now can’t link, but somewhere it is told, it is never going to have a Linux port, because it highly depends on Windows specific system calls.
Sadly OBS can replace Vmix only in those simple tasks I can do on my own. For more complex jobs (sports broadcast with multiple cameras, slow-mo’s, etc. OBS is insufficient).
I can imagine a similar scenario regarding a CAD software.
So FreeCAD is indeed excellent to draw a plan for a replacement steering tie rod for a RC car modell, and have it 3D printed, FreeCAD can be insufficient to plan a complete rocket engine maybe. (I’m just speculating, I don’t know )
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I dont use cad software, only once got caught out offering a morning to a autocad group at the University so created and taught them DOS and Windows, thought as they were going out into the real world after the end of the year they needed other skills, plus they knew more about autocad that I will ever know
Just checked the autodesk site and there is no plans to port to linux and the main product is over 2k dollar so not cheap
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I can imagine one situation that could change this.
Say, french government says to them:
We want to use a CAD like your AutoCAD to draw plans about our new Maginot.
But we don’t want to use Windows, because many of our cities moved to Linux already, so please port your AutoCAD to Linux! We can offer a very well visible sum of money for that if you do it.
Absolutely fictional story! But I’m sure, there would be a Linux port in couple months.
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That almost qualifies as a solution.
Money changes everything.
So why cant the Linux Foundation “buy” a port for some of these critical packages?
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Does it have that money? And of course, that package would not be free.
Who would really buy it then?
After all the package should generate some income.
Anyway, we need to forget, that everything is for free regarding Linux.
(Yes, the base OS is free [of charge], but a creative software running on top if isn’t necessary free.)
So this question reamins unanswered.
However I see the example of Blackmagic Design:
They offer a cut down, but still very powerful version for free, and available for all major desktop platforms.
Whoever enters, there’s a high probability to buy the costly full version -if not next week, then some years later.
Marketing experts from other software developer companies should contact Blackmagic, how this method is beneficial to them.
Personally I think that could work for any big featured software, whatever office, or whichever CAD is the product.
Then when the userbase converts to Linux, just takes the Linux variant of that something.
I beleive a big public opinion poll among engineers using AutoCAD:
“would you consider to use Linux instead of Windows, if there would be an AutoCAD version for Linux?”
would answer, wether it is worth to port such a big software to Linux.
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Dreamweaver first came out on Mac - maybe even before Adobe bought it…
I agree - it was an awesome HTML developement tool.. It output clean plain raw HTML (unlike shite web tools from Microsoft)…
I’m saying “clean” HTML - you could publish it on Apache - but still edit it using “vi” on a UNIX systems… unlike Microsoft products..
And Dreamweaver also shipped with a free MacOS text editor called “bbedit” - that also did “polution free” text… (i.e. you didn’t have to run it through dos2unix to get rid of “^m” characters)…
Universally - the whole internet world runs on big-endian - and raw text without CRLF - yet Microsoft foist their 8086 legacy bullshit on us - FORTY F–KING years later… I’m oversimplifying it… but we’re stuck with legacy Microsoft and 8bit shit to this day…
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I can get paid to advertise for Linux?
Where do I sign up?
Is it on a per ad basis, after the fact?
LINUX IS BETTER!!!
Or
85% of the internet runs Linux!!!
Or
I live on Linux. Be cool, like me!!!
There, that’s three ads. Can I receive €120, please?
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I appreciate all the comments about “said quote” but none have addressed the issue of what really happened and the underlying subject of “how great” Linux is!!!
I do not really care as to “how great” Linux is, I just want an OS that works!!! So please, quit wasting your time trying to convince me on “how great” Linux is, I already know more about Linux, than I really need!!!
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You (conveniently?) forget to include that LFS includes all kinds of development tools. Don’t compare apples and oranges.
If you want to compare apples to apples, you’d need to build Windows from source (which is not possible, unless you’re a Microsoft employee involved with the development of Windows) and all tools involved in building Windows… from scratch.
But: to compare a normal Windows version with a comparable Linux OS, that would mean comparing it to Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or some such. That would a level playing field. The various Linux distributions would need to have LibreOffice removed (which is included in the default install), but then you have something comparable one to one.
I already know what it takes to build Linux. I’ve hand built my own kernels in both LFS (needs no explanation) and Gentoo (from stage1). However, that time has passed. I don’t consider myself any type of power user anymore. That being said, I still believe in the capabilities of Linux, simply because I see Linux behaving stable and sanely on a daily basis. Unfortunately, such cannot be said about Windows, in my experience.
If you are ok with using Windows, power to you. That being said, I’m not interested anymore in Windows. For me, it’s broken by design. Any new computer I get, I first test whether it functions properly and then as soon as possible I put Linux on it, simply because I’ve got a better user experience with Linux than with Windows.
The day may come when I’m interested in the CLI again. However, at the moment I’m a happy point’n clicky user.
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