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from the can't-resist-that-minty-freshness dept.
prospectacle writes:
How to best replace Windows XP has become interesting to a much wider group of people, due to the end of official support for the product. (a previous story mentioned an Indian state government that urged its departments to use India's home-grown linux distro "BOSS Linux").
Some people may be using XP because it came with their computer and they never gave it a second thought, but there are probably plenty of others who don't want to spend the money, don't like the look of Windows 8, have older hardware, or are just used to the XP interface.
To these people, ZDNet humbly offers Linux Mint as a suggestion to replace XP.
They provide fairly compelling arguments to their target audience like:
- You can make it look almost exactly like XP
- It's free
- You can boot the live CD to try before you "buy".
- Decent, free alternatives exist for email, office, book-keeping and web-browsing.
- Virtually no need for any anti-virus for home users.
- Installation is quite easy these days.
- Works on fairly modest hardwar
Ending free support for a 12 year old product seems like a sensible policy for a for-profit entity like microsoft. In the past they've been able to count on people upgrading from old microsoft products to new microsoft products, and so any measure that would encourage (or pressure) people to upgrade would increase their sales.
Seems like a winning formula.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @02:21AM
heavy AutoCAD user
Pretty much everything imports and exports DXF these days.
Tried BRL-CAD? FreeCAD? LibreCAD? OpenSCAD? QCAD? [wikipedia.org]
What kinds of shortcomings did you find?
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by gitano on Tuesday April 01 2014, @08:15AM
My area of work on AutoCAD its design of buildings, mainly 2D plains, and the shortcoming its i not only use AutoCAD but also other propietary software added to it (like add-ons), to help on installation plans, plumbing, hvac, electricity, and prices/measurement of elements, etc. Even have some autolisp sowftare writed myself. I love Linux but theres no real alternative to all of this in a professional environement. I tried hard :)
DXF its a thing of the past, the DWG format its more 'open' today, and a lot of open source software allredy reads it, its really not needed anymore to export to DXF. The problem on DWG its more about trademarks.
AutoCAD had UNIX and Apple versions in the past. Last Apple version was version 12 in 1992 and last Unix one was version 13 on 1994, i installed (not whitout problems) one version 12 in a Debian Sarge, but more for the fun factor, in that time i was still using the DOS version for the real work :) The workstation used on DOS had a very expensive Matrox graphic card (16 colours) on no support on linux :(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @01:02AM
AutoCAD[...]also other [proprietary]{1} software added
Ah. The plot thickens.
design of buildings, mainly 2D [plans]{1}
Yes, I wondered about your niche.
There was a guy who haunted the Mint forum that made a point of the fact that he did all his tasks as an architect using only FOSS. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [linuxmint.com]
I now wish I had pulled up that old bookmark earlier because he mentioned 2 apps that the Wikipedia page doesn't mention: Archimedes and SagCAD.
He also mentions Blender, which I don't correlate with dimensioned drawings.
Now, he is in New Mexico, so perhaps renovating pueblos or building earthen abodes for washed-up actors [google.com] is significantly different than designing skyscrapers or what it is that you do.
DXF its a thing of the past
+1 Informative. It sure does get mentioned a lot, however.
AutoCAD had UNIX and Apple versions
Yes, it was initially a UNIX-only app.
{1} Looking at your username, I wonder if English is a second language for you.
The browser that I use allows multiple profiles and each can be configured differently.
A profile set up to access English sites and outfitted with a spellchecker could help you make your points even more clearly.
-- gewg_