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Comment by edg5000

6 hours ago

> the software support for what I need is much better in the Windows world

Please elaborate; can you name a few tools and what you use them for? Just curious.

A number of the Autodesk tools and Solidworks, for modeling. Slicers can use APIs native to Windows to perform model repairs. Bambu Lab's farm manager only runs on Windows.

  • Not sure about Autodesk, but have you tried FreeCAD? I own a perpetual SolidWorks license but haven't even activated it. Used it quite lot on another license but I just prefer FreeCAD so much. It does choke on high primitive counts though. Probably has worse FEA (invokes external simulation tools) but that is an assumption, never did FEA. Mostly did parametric CAD, not much technical drawings either, can't say much about that.

    For slicers I use PrusaSlicer on Linux (don't have a Prusa; it's really good for generic slicing). But I can see how Bambu stuff could be an issue if it's Win only and not Wineable.

  • The Creality one runs decent on Mac and Windows, sadly on Linux its a nightmare, and technically why I ditched Ubuntu / popOS for Arch Linux, but I can't help but still feel it runs a little weirder + its out of date compared to Mac and Windows versions. My buddy used to use Orca slicer on my printer, that one iirc should run on Mac too, but I havent tried it.

    • SuperSlicer, PrusaSlicer and Creality Print work fine for me using Debian. Orca Slicer runs but reliably crashes when opening the preferences window, something which it has been doing for a long time according to the bug report. Cura also works fine om Debian for me. Which problems did you have running any of these?

So sayeth the sea lion

  • Not the person you replied to, but I’ll go. Try experimenting with ham radio on anything but Windows. As far as I can tell, they revoke your Apple developer’s license and confiscate your Linux install disks when you start selling radio hardware.

    That’s not completely true. There’s good Linux and Mac software for lots of things. But approximately 100% of radio manufacturers ship Windows software. Far fewer support anything else.

    I bought a new radio at Christmas. Before buying it, I ruled out alternatives that didn’t have 1st party or good 3rd party support. It’s like trying to buy a scanner in 2003.