Why There Should Be AutoCAD Linux
If you’ve ever been a part of any drafting communities odds are you’ve used the ever popular AutoCAD. It’s a great piece of software and for anyone who has used it, it’s easy to see why it’s become the industry standard. Everyone from industry professionals, schools and even hobbyists employ AutoCAD. Along with being the industry its native file format is also the industry standard. Unfortunately for the rest of the community who does not want to use AutoCAD, their software of choice had better license the format from Autodesk or else they will be left in the dark with no way to work with data saved in the most popular format. While this does seem like a problem, there is an even bigger problem and that is the utter lack of AutoCAD Linux. That’s right; the largest and most popular CAD software does not support Linux. In fact it supports nothing but Windows. While this not seem like a big deal to some people, to the drafting community, especially those who don’t run Windows, it can be a major headache.
A quick stop at almost any community on the web and there will be people asking why they simply cannot get AutoCAD running on their Linux computer. The replies are always the same and that is that you need to install Windows. Odds are if the person is running Linux to being with they have a very strong disdain for the Windows operating system. But now that they want to start drafting they have two choices. They can either go out and spend a lot of money to install Windows and deal with an operating system they don’t like. Or they can choose to not participate in the large AutoCAD community and miss out on just about every drafting standard there is. This is the reason there needs to be AutoCAD Linux. To anyone who deals with computers on a daily basis, they will testify that there is almost always a Linux version of a piece of software that has virtually taken over the market. The only exception to this may be Adobe’s Photoshop. While it certainly is the company’s choice not to produce AutoCAD Linux, it seems like they are only hurting the drafting community as a whole.
If you’re really determined to see AutoCAD Linux there are a couple things that you may be able to do. Recently with the advancements of emulation software, people have gotten AutoCAD Linux to run under a simple emulation of windows, but this is far from a native AutoCAD Linux solution. If you absolutely must have AutoCAD Linux and have it now, then this is most likely your best option. If you would like to see AutoCAD Linux in the future, then you should go to the official website and send a comment to the company requesting to see AutoCAD Linux in the future. In the past this option has been used to a varying degree of success. While it hasn’t always worked, it can sometimes lead to great results, and with Linux becoming more and more popular each year, especially in the drafting world, AutoCAD Linux just might happen.
It’s sad to see a product that had became the industry standard because of it’s great support and usability use that power to bludgeon and strangle the community that made it so popular. While the product is great there are a lot of other factors to take into account when developing such software. There needs to be an AutoCAD Linux solution sometime in the future, because without it not only are they destroying a once great drafting unity, but they are forcing everyone who needs AutoCAD to stick with Windows, another large industry standard. But people are slowly moving away from Windows and as more and more people switch to OSX and other UNIX derived alternative such as Linux, it’s a strong possibility AutoCAD Linux is in the works.
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