License issues, Linux, VM and the future of Alibre

[oldbrad]

I am one of those still running V12.0 and I'm particularly pissed that my old license is to be unilaterally revoked and the only way forward is to pay yet another £400 for the privilege.

I'm hopeful that the new Alibre team are listening: Constant updates will never work. Linux is now easy and for FREE. Even if your software, Alibre, only runs on the latest windoze. If you have a modern computer you are capable of running ANY operating system under a virtual machine installed under whatever OS you prefer.

I am running, installed under Linux, a virtual copy of Windows XP and installed and licensed Alibre Design Expert 12.0, one of the truly GREAT productivity tools.

Now it's dead easy when something screws up, software crash, hardware broken, or virus attack. Just take the last good VM clone back up image and re-install it anywhere. No more 'how the f... did I install the old OS', what configuration did I have to do and importantly NO Alibre license hassle.

So you developer duds, think on, universal applications are the future. Alibre Design has been held back for years by only running under wobbly Windows.

 

[JST]

I can appreciate the idea.

I can also see that Alibre needs work and continual upgrading as a windoze program. Add the idea of porting it to Linux and maintaining that in parallel, and you are looking at an $800 maintenance fee..... There would have to be enough market under Linux to pay its own way.

 

[DavidJ]

Hang on - if Alibre 12 is installed and licensed on a Virtual Machine, it won't stop running when the legacy licensing service is turned off, and the VM can be transferred to other hardware if required.

Licence is not being revoked, the licensing server is being retired.

 

[Max]

I'm hopeful that the new Alibre team are listening: Constant updates will never work. Linux is now easy and for FREE. Even if your software, Alibre, only runs on the latest windoze. If you have a modern computer you are capable of running ANY operating system under a virtual machine installed under whatever OS you prefer.

I am running, installed under Linux, a virtual copy of Windows XP and installed and licensed Alibre Design Expert 12.0, one of the truly GREAT productivity tools.

Now it's dead easy when something screws up, software crash, hardware broken, or virus attack. Just take the last good VM clone back up image and re-install it anywhere. No more 'how the f... did I install the old OS', what configuration did I have to do and importantly NO Alibre license hassle.

So you developer duds, think on, universal applications are the future. Alibre Design has been held back for years by only running under wobbly Windows.

I appreciate that some users want a Linux version. The reality is that we are heavily tied to Windows technology and have been for a while. While it is possible to port, we would have quite the unhappy user base if we spent a whole year (or more) doing nothing but porting to Linux, which satisfies 1% of our existing users, allows for no other improvements in the software, and means an overall decrease in quality because now we have to verify it works on multiple OSs, which means more QA resources, etc.

Our prices are just not high enough to justify that expense for such a small amount of people. While it is true that you can run VMs on any computer nowadays, the reality is that the vast, vast majority of people do not. For those that do, they have a solution already. I'm sure you don't cater the majority of your business activities to 1.5% of potential users, and I would appreciate it if you took your insults to another forum because we do not tolerate it here.

Max

 

[oldbrad]

What insult is that Max? You already killed my license so BLOW ME AWAY.

 

[Max]

Your license has not been revoked. Further, you indicate you don't need to mess with relicensing due to using VM backups.

So you are "particularly pissed" that you have a nonexistent problem, if I'm reading that right.

If you feel like having an actual conversation you can email me at max @ alibre.com. If you feel like continuing to act like this, you will not be welcome to post here.

 

[neptune769]

I'm still running version 11. I just upgraded my pc to 64 bit but running Linux. I can't get Windows 7 pro installed because of the lack of USB drivers. I didn't appreciate that the licence server was retired. If anything ever happens to my Windows 7 32 bit drive I lost a program I payed for and can't afford to upgrade to Atom. I'm hoping to win at least an upgrade license with the next contest. However there is stiff compatiion out there. My father being one of them. He has won second place the last few contests. Anyway just wanted to say I think they could have done it another way where we that still use the older software would not loose out if our system crashes.

Thanks,
Dennis Line

 

[Markaj]

Well I at least would like to see Alibre available for Mac OS!
Ok it’s working fine with Bootcamp, and sure I could try my luck with Parallels, but it would save a lot of faffing about.

 

[Ydl]

I’m in the anything but windows camp. The OS is going to shizzle. When you can’t control down time due to updates, can’t trust forced updates to not delete your stuff, can’t trust forced updates not to break your software etc, it’s no longer an enterprise level OS IMO.

That said I doubt Alibre has the user base to warrant the effort in porting to Linux and OS X has its own issues (ie no way I’m paying for an Apple workstation to run software that has its stunning value as a major selling point), and it’s hardly their fault that ms have crapped the bed.

I would be interested in running Alibre in WINE though. Max, any chance that if you guys ever rework the installer we get something that’s compatible with WINE? It’s my understanding that this is a major roadblock to running on Linux?

Or if anyone has succeeded with this, hit me up - I’ll be your friend.

 

[DavidJ]

The issue is that WINE doesn't emulate DirectX well enough to work correctly with Alibre.

 

[bigseb]

I voted Linux. Have done so for years.

Despite relying heavily on Windows for my music production software. And slicing software for my three 3D printers. And Keyshot. And gaming.

 

[Ydl]

The issue is that WINE doesn't emulate DirectX well enough to work correctly with Alibre.

Is there an install walk through? Last time I checked near everyone was getting stuck on the installer?

 

[DavidJ]

It won't work - the graphics of WINE can't cope (unless there has been a recent step change). You'd be wasting your time.

 

[oldfox]

Still waiting for someone to brew up a batch of "Champagne".

 

[Ydl]

It won't work - the graphics of WINE can't cope (unless there has been a recent step change). You'd be wasting your time.

I've seen a couple of write ups for installing dx on wine. I'd be interested in having a play around with it.

 

[Alexander]

Has anyone had any luck running Alibre with wine now that it uses a different graphics engine?
I want to fully transfer all my work over to Linux but Alibre is holding me back.

 

[mattn]

Has anyone had any luck running Alibre with wine now that it uses a different graphics engine?
I want to fully transfer all my work over to Linux but Alibre is holding me back.

Currently I haven't tried as I haven't heard of dx11 or dx12 being fully supported.

I too wish Alibre was available on Linux. I only run a Windows machine for .NET programming and for Alibre, I use Linux (Ubuntu) for everything else including CAM / CAE (cfd, fea, etc.).

In my opinion, what would really need to be done as the first step in order to move towards Alibre working on Win & Linux would be for the graphics engine to be re-written to Vulkan. Vulkan is on Win/Linux/Mac and in many cases runs better than OpenGL as graphics card manufacturers have been working with the Vulkan devs to assist with getting the best compatibility to the hardware.

WINE 4.6 has a complete Vulkan driver implemented (X11 supported - so that means Ubuntu) according to the v4 release info so that's a great step forward as it also means better WineD3D support as a Vulkan-based translation layer will work more efficiently than in the past, however pure Vulkan is still best.

Once this mammoth task is achieved I would gather that either Alibre would run on Linux with WINE, or, being able to port the rest of the program shouldn't be too hard.

As was said earlier, continually updating and improving Alibre is the priority and the budget limits porting and testing, however I think that in the future if Alibre has its graphics engine changed to Vulkan that it could work on Linux under WINE which would only require one codebase to be maintained.

Windows is quickly moving towards online experience only and seems to continue to have serious update issues such as deleting your files, breaking major functionality of software, causing CPU usage to go crazy (Cortana bug 50-75% CPU usage).

Whereas Linux just works, I've never had serious update issues like the ones I've had with Windows.

Just my $0.02 (two cents)!

 

[Alexander]

An interesting read especially regarding Vulkan.
I now use Linux as my daily driver for CAD (Bricscad and MOI) along with CAM (LinuxCNC) and general work, running on Mint Cinnamon. Only using Windoze for Alibre and occasional Rhino. i Love the raw un-bundled simplicity of Linux, I'm still fairly new to Linux and keen to learn more Shell commands.
One thing I have noticed is that more and more gamers are changing to Linux with Steam and Google, one reason is because the games run faster. Most PC's are now purchased by gamers, I can see a Linux revolution on the horizon.......

 

[bigseb]

An interesting read especially regarding Vulkan.
I now use Linux as my daily driver for CAD (Bricscad and MOI) along with CAM (LinuxCNC) and general work, running on Mint Cinnamon. Only using Windoze for Alibre and occasional Rhino. i Love the raw un-bundled simplicity of Linux, I'm still fairly new to Linux and keen to learn more Shell commands.
One thing I have noticed is that more and more gamers are changing to Linux with Steam and Google, one reason is because the games run faster. Most PC's are now purchased by gamers, I can see a Linux revolution on the horizon.......

Which version of Moi you running on Linux?

 

[Alexander]

Hey Seb, MOI 3 with wine