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this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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That is 10,000% people who don’t do creative work especially professionally. I am fine with gimp and darktable versus anything Adobe/paid but I also barely use them lol. I would be back off Linux in a heartbeat if I honestly couldn’t use something I needed even though I prefer it.
Medical work, too. Several exam machines only work with Windows. I've heard once that "wine's pretty good nowadays", which completely ignores the detail that it isn't tested with said equipment and its drivers.
Anything related to engineering, whether civil or mechanical, also goes with either Windows or Mac, because the free CAD options don't hold a candle to AutoCAD and others.
Lastly, there's no FOSS alternative to completely replace Microsoft Active Directory, so offices where 90% of the work is done on the web browser won't bother because they'll be losing control over individual machines.
There's so much focus on "me" and "freedom" that they often forget there's a whole damn world of different needs around them.
I could go on for days about the problems with medical devices. I write software for one of those at my day job and as much as our team would love to port the software to something other than Windows, that would be a logistical nightmare.
The thunderbolt connection alone can break because of a thousand factors, even on the exact combination of hardware and operating system it was tested with. Processing of medical images is often very GPU-heavy which gives us the same problems as with CAD software.
Even if you get all the technical problems out of the way, medical devices need to be certified before you're allowed to use them for diagnostics. This often includes an exact specification of the platform you run the software on. If you just take something that's certified for "Windows 10 between 20H2 and 22H2, Intel or AMD CPU, device driver version 8.1.23" and try to run it on Wine, I would expect the American FDA, German TÜV and Chinese NMPA to fight over who gets to kick your door in first. It might be possible to get a certification for a Linux version but probably only for one specific combination of distribution, display server and desktop environment.
CAD options also flow over to the whole GPU debate as well. Yes, Nvidia's company practices are awful. Yes, I'd love to have more options. But this doesn't change that most of the heavyweight CAD options out there don't play well with non-Nvidia GPUs.
I'd love it if there were FOSS / GPU-agnostic CAD options. But until then, focusing on what works is important, y'know?