Linux Version?

Even that doesn't matter, seeing that SW is a specialized piece of software that usually runs on a dedicated machine which costs a fraction of the SW license.

It doesn't really matter which OS that dedicated machine runs, so nothing speaks against a stable, lean OS like Linux.

Heck, SW could come bundled with a custom Linux distro, and the whole shebang would install out of the box straight from boot-up.

--Daniel

It is, and people do. Just not on the desktop. But or other highly specialized software is just not the average desktop stuff.

--Daniel

In the case of dedicated machines running more or less a single app this doesn't have to be the case. Except that SW uses M$-specific stuff like embedded Word or Excel documents -- yuck

--Daniel

... And would use Open Office. Besides The glimp, Blender ...

The new macs just let you run Windows alongside Mac OSX so in effect you just switch from one OS to the other.I suppose they never really did this till recently so as for why they were better as you have asked over the years has puzzled me too

You do need a special bit of software one you buy(Parralells) and one thats free Bootcamp

I suppose parallels is like dual booting I wouldnt know as I use Bootcamp and you physically switch between which partition you wish to boot on startup the advantage of bootcamp means you get all the system resources as opposed to sharing them betwenn OS

The new mac I just got has dual xeons and really flies along (especially rendering) the macbrook pro just!!! and this is silly looks cool and is quick and im happy .

IM NOT SAYING SOLIDWORKS IS THE FASTEST ON A MAC or THAT THE MAC BETTER THAN A PC but I havent noticed any serious side effects!!! yet

But the good thing is that for every other application Ive been putting time on is it seems much quicker than everything else on my pc

apart from that a Mac with windows int really any different from a PC with Linux

The core of SW is code which they purchase from UGS and Parasolids is available on Linux as well as Mac OS-X. The user interface of SW is straight MS code and calls to MFC. Hard to port when all your code does is call someone's code for the UI.

PTC did grow up on Unix. UGS actually grew up on AOS and VMS and then ported to Unix.

UGS NX5 is available on MAC OS-X. UGS NX series and PTC Wildfire are currently available on Linux, but I think Wildfire 4 has been withdrawn from Linux distro due to lack of sales.

The one issue that everyone forgets about is that Linux is not always Linux. The different distro, both commercial and free-source, are each just slightly different that it makes it hard to port this type of SW to as the users require a stable working environment. Throw in graphics cards and drivers and you have a mess trying to identify which ONE to support. The PTCs and UGSs cannot be expected to support all flavors (distros) of Linux.

Such issues don't exist on properly written software. All those dependencies, including graphics cards drivers, are handled through abstraction layers (just as in Windows).

But I agree; we don't live in a perfect world, and many GUI-heavy programs don't work without tweaking because they make certain unwarranted assumptions about, for example, the window manager being used. But those issues are completely unneccesary and are easily avoided.

I don't know what PTCs or UGSs are, but except for certain performance issues where the software really needs accress to specific graphics card or processor features I can't see the problem. Linux itself ist just the OS kernel, and at any given time there are just one or two major versions out that need to be supported. Anyway, nothing speaks against bundling SW with a custom-made distro. If you screw up your system, just pop in the CD and get it rebuilt from scratch.

--Daniel