Howdy,
I heard about VL only minutes ago. I have been using Debian for a while and it seemed too large, slow, unstable and similar to MS mentality for my tastes. VL sounded right up my alley because of buzzwords like small, simple, tight, stable.
But what I mainly want to do is run Calculix, the open source Finite Element Analysis program. What would it take to run that on VL? I mean, when would it likely make it into the repos, considering I have no knowledge or time to help?
Also, I wonder about possibly running a Windows emulator to run Alibre solid modeling. To save you time looking it up, Alibre is similar to AutoDesk Inventor and Solid Works but is just big enough to get most jobs done so it is far less expensive. Alibre is the only viable solid modeler I have found for my needs but so far, they refuse to consider providing a linux version. If it weren't for that, my life would be Windows-free. But this is not a looming issue for me, just a back-burner issue. Plus, I suspect it would defeat my purpose to complicate my linux system to run a windows program and get rid of windows. Seems it would make more sense to just run it on Windows until a viable solid modeler in linux comes into existence - one as cheap yet powerful as Alibre. I wouldn't waste your time on this subject, but if you know anything I don't know about solid modeling and getting away from MS, please advise. Far as I know, powerful solid modeling seems to be the one thing missing from the open source world.
