Is it time for Linux

[AndyRonLI]

Folks, I am looking more and more towards a Linux environment. I am a computational fluid dynamicist by trade, and ALL the legit open source and commercial CFD tools run under Linux. ALL the legit Finite Element Analysis tools run under Linux. All the high end CAD tools run under Linux. Right now the only frequent use tool I have (side work) is Chief Architect. If this thing can run on a MAC, shouldn't be an issue to port it to a Linux box. If support is limited to some specific graphics cards I could accept that. CA? How about it?

Andy

[DRAWZILLA]

Linux is not listed in the min. requirements or operating systems Chief runs on.

[SHCanada2]

Running a virtual machine might be an option

[AndyRonLI]

Drawzilla, I should have been clearer. I am aware of the requirements as currently stated and I run CA on a Windows 10 machine. Revit, Autodesk etc all have LInux ports. Perhaps it is time for CA to also to create a Linux port. If you can run under the current MacOS you are already 3/4 of the way there, as MacOS is a proprietary version of Linux. Anyone else out there looking for a Linux version? It would be another little chunk of market share for CA

 

[KenL-sdd]

@AndyRonLI Please don't take this wrong. I have been using Chief for years and have seen the major improvements they have made over that time and expect to see many more in the next release. I would rather see my SSA or yearly fees go towards improvements for the majority of users, not just a little chunk of the market. It is not just a simple change to have it run under another operating system @Renerabbitt. There are already things that do not work on a Mac that runs fine on a PC. I'm with @SHCanada2thinking that a virtual machine would be a viable option. Just like the Ruby scripting is Chiefs version not the same as the normal Ruby

Respectfully, Ken

[DBCooper]

According to what I have read online, you can't run either revit or autocad on linux: 

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/installation-licensing/revit-in-linux/td-p/7774012

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-forum/autocad-on-linux/m-p/7927729#M928989

 

Since linux only has a 3% market share on desktop operating systems, I can't see how Chief would get their ROI to do this:

https://linuxiac.com/linux-hits-3-percent-market-share/#:~:text=Linux Operating System Achieved a,competition from other operating systems.

 

 

[BenMerritt]

6 hours ago, AndyRonLI said:

Drawzilla, I should have been clearer. I am aware of the requirements as currently stated and I run CA on a Windows 10 machine. Revit, Autodesk etc all have LInux ports. Perhaps it is time for CA to also to create a Linux port. If you can run under the current MacOS you are already 3/4 of the way there, as MacOS is a proprietary version of Linux. Anyone else out there looking for a Linux version? It would be another little chunk of market share for CA

Technically speaking, MacOS is a UNIX derivative, but not really Linux; it uses the XNU kernel instead of the Linux kernel, and many of its userspace utilities are either BSD-derived (rather than the GNU utilities that most Linux distributions use) or proprietary. It's more similar to Linux than Windows is, but the parts that are most relevant to Chief Architect (especially the GUI components) are still radically different from MacOS.

 

I'm an avid Linux user myself, but despite recent improvements and slowly growing market share, it's not really the "year of the Linux desktop" yet. I wouldn't call a Linux port impossible, but it'll likely be a significant amount of time before such a project begins to make sense from a practical perspective.