The End of Windows?

[Cheerful Charlie]

Windows will not disappear while software like AutoCad only runs on Windows. If and when the day comes that Windows isn't needed for such Windows only applications, we might see Windows go belly up slowly. The other problem is proprietary software written for a company that runs only on Windows and may not ever gracefully be able to run under Linux, and the idea of rewriting it to run on Linux is not a viable idea monetarily. There are lots of machine shops still running software for machine tools using DOS.

You can't run AutoCad under Wine? I think the future is OS agnostic software using additional layer of abstraction between OS and software.

No, AutoCad will not run under Wine. There are as a matter of fact, lots of complex professional SW packages that do not run under Linux or Wine. Such as Photoshop. And other Cad programs of various kinds. Also games for a long time. Many of which had DRM schemes that worked on Windows so those companies didn't care to try to come up with new DRM schemes that worked under Linux. Linux also didn't have good drivers for more powerful GPU cards.

Linux's strength was robust severs that were free or cheap that were easy to administer and were pretty secure. The official Wine site has a data base of programs that work under Wine and those that don't or run poorly. On the other hand, your old MS Office 2007 stuff will run.
Such as Excel 2007.

 

[barbos]

Windows will not disappear while software like AutoCad only runs on Windows. If and when the day comes that Windows isn't needed for such Windows only applications, we might see Windows go belly up slowly. The other problem is proprietary software written for a company that runs only on Windows and may not ever gracefully be able to run under Linux, and the idea of rewriting it to run on Linux is not a viable idea monetarily. There are lots of machine shops still running software for machine tools using DOS.

You can't run AutoCad under Wine? I think the future is OS agnostic software using additional layer of abstraction between OS and software.

No, AutoCad will not run under Wine. There are as a matter of fact, lots of complex professional SW packages that do not run under Linux or Wine. Such as Photoshop. And other Cad programs of various kinds. Also games for a long time. Many of which had DRM schemes that worked on Windows so those companies didn't care to try to come up with new DRM schemes that worked under Linux. Linux also didn't have good drivers for more powerful GPU cards.

Linux's strength was robust severs that were free or cheap that were easy to administer and were pretty secure. The official Wine site has a data base of programs that work under Wine and those that don't or run poorly. On the other hand, your old MS Office 2007 stuff will run.
Such as Excel 2007.

No need for lecture, I know that not everything works with Wine. Most of the time it's lack of support of things like DirectX. But Wine is getting better.