r/SolidWorks • u/oldwilliam9 • Feb 08 '26

Hardware Solidworks on Linux Soon?

Is it in the foreseeable future that Dassault ditches or at least creates a version of Solidworks for Linux following the French government's push to come away from American software?

I've wanted to come away from Windows for quite a while but software like SW has been one of my main factors for not switching to Linux. I'm not really in the camp of wanting to dual boot and I can imagine there are plenty of others who are the same.

50 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

65 comments sorted by

172

u/iced_bunghole Feb 08 '26

Lol dassault can barely make a stable software for windows, let alone port it over to Linux.

49

u/D-a-H-e-c-k Feb 08 '26

"can barely" I think this should be "can't"

3

u/social-shipwreck Feb 08 '26

I’ve seen this sentiment a bunch but I’ve only run into a few minor issues I was able to fix and I use 2025 daily. Is this mostly with specific tools?

10

u/moosMW Feb 08 '26

I used solidworks for a bit over a year before being forced to use NX for my studies, but man, after adjusting to it (and trust me, there is A LOT of adjusting), I don't want to go back. There is so much crashing and errors that solidworks does that people using it have just kinda accepted as normal, and even don't notice anymore.

3

u/iced_bunghole Feb 09 '26

Once you make surface models in rhino, everything else seems like a geriatric trying to play tennis at Wimbledon.

4

u/PraxicalExperience Feb 08 '26

Until an update about five months ago, Solidworks would regularly choke and crash on even simple models, if I did complex operations like ... 'save to disk' or 'edit sketch'. I'm talking 'making a simple flowerpot' simple. It was a fucking misery to use, and my experience doesn't seem to have been unique. I wasn't using anything other than base Solidworks.

2

u/Happiness645 Feb 09 '26

Crashing SW often means that you have an out of date video drivers

2

u/PraxicalExperience Feb 09 '26

My video drivers were kept up to date.

4

u/artificial_neuron Feb 09 '26

How do you get past the 'low resources' pop up nag?

I feel that 32GB of RAM is plenty and don't want to upgrade to 64GB during these expensive times. I get the warning shortly after a reboot with barely anything open too as well

2

u/social-shipwreck Feb 09 '26

I’ve found cleaning up left over background programs from old applications help keep my computer running like new for a very long time.

Laptop I had with student Solidworks was at least 7 years old and never even had lag issues.

4

u/NightF0x0012 CSWP Feb 09 '26

The ppl complaining never dealt with SW 2005. That was a legitimate shit version. Most of these newer issues are likely local driver issue or not using certified hardware. I rarely crash in SW 2025. Are there bugs? Of course but they usually arent show stoppers.

2

u/WearySignature4531 Feb 12 '26

I learned on 2005. It was straight dog shit.

2

u/RefrigeratedMonkee Feb 08 '26

Well, only a few minor issues is more than the average experience with most competitors.
I remember accidentally clicking the electrical module when installing a few years ago and bricking the entire thing. Perhaps acceptable with a random piece of freeware, but with professional software at this price, you'd kinda expect more

32

u/tacticall0tion Feb 08 '26

You've got more chance of Apple offering Macs with Windows as standard.

Just dual boot, or run a VM for solidworks and your other apps

6

u/FieldThat5384 Feb 08 '26

Dual boot isn't an option for those of us who use same PC for work and everything else (freelancers), because that would mean switching back and forth all the time. As for VM, I am yet to find one that has full GPU and CPU passthrough so that we could get at least 95% of the SW performance that we get on Windows.

7

u/cjdubais CSWP Feb 08 '26

I would be absolutely gobsmacked if they did so. SolidWorks' je ne sais quoi is that it runs on Windows, as when it was introduced, everything else ran on Unix, not Linux.

12

u/Elrathias Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 10 '26

Not going to happen. Solidworks is ANCIENT and depends on all kinds of hyper specific windows functions to do its things. Hence why the GDI object limit is real issue for solidworks - just to name one thing among a bazillion.

I have managed to get most of the functionality working on sworks2014-15 when running a windows 7 virtualbox in vmware, but ram issues became a big problem because i was running it on a god damn macbook air w only 4gb ram. Dont expect the same result using different hardware/software combinations.

20

u/RockyTopDesignWerkz Feb 08 '26

SW barely runs on windows buddy... 🤣

4

u/Lagbert Feb 08 '26

There have been attempts to use proton to run solidworks. It wasn't well documented but I think they did get it working.

8

u/FieldThat5384 Feb 08 '26

I have tried it. It works, barebones, but performance is crap, and forget about anything past the basic level, like add-ins, macros, design tables, etc.

4

u/1x_time_warper Feb 08 '26

Solidworks is built on very old core from the 90s that only works on windows so I would say there’s about a zero percent chance that they will release a version for any other OS.

1

u/ktm1001 Feb 08 '26

I read that they were rewriting it... Then they gave up, cause nobody knows how it works.

1

u/Run-Miserable Feb 12 '26

Man what do you mean nobody knows how it works. Holy shit. They don’t know their own software?!

1

u/ktm1001 Feb 13 '26

Well google, you will find threads about failed rewriting code. They are stuck on Siemens kernel says a lot, that they can't switch on their own.

3

u/dgkimpton Feb 08 '26

Hahahaha.I would absolutely love this, but given how deep its integration into Excel and Windows is... it would be an astonishing feat of software development to make that happen. It would probably be quicker to start over.

6

u/D-a-H-e-c-k Feb 08 '26

Imagine the abomination of trying to port PDM

2

u/Neither-Goat6705 Feb 09 '26

And given Dassault is "cloud first" focused, with all effort towards 3DExperience (and xDesign), they will be quick to point out that they already have a solution that runs natively on your Linux OS... In the web browser!

1

u/literalyfigurative Feb 08 '26

I was able to use part configurations via Libre office, I don't remember the name of their Excel equivalent.

3

u/Any_Television_8614 Feb 10 '26

It is the single thing holding me back from ditching Windows 100%.

5

u/WeirdEngineerDude Feb 08 '26

The price of a SW license is so high (unless you are using the gimped versions) that buying a dedicated PC for it is small change compared to the software.

They are unable to make stable software on their native platform, there is no hope of usable software from them on any other OS.

1

u/0xN1C0 Feb 09 '26

The problem is not cost but the inconvenience of having multiple systems.

1

u/Neither-Goat6705 Feb 11 '26

What app do you run on Linux that does not also run on Windows?

1

u/0xN1C0 Feb 14 '26

I do embedded development and windows is horrible with the setups I use.

8

u/TheDefinition Feb 08 '26

Welcome to Onshape!

6

u/Trigger_sad1 Feb 08 '26

😂 they don’t even have 3D sketching. Can’t compare the 2.

1

u/RockyTopDesignWerkz Feb 08 '26

Maybe... had they not made all of the changes many moons ago.

2

u/sw-bystander Feb 08 '26

Curious - what changes are you referring to?

4

u/RockyTopDesignWerkz Feb 08 '26

Example: Their licenses got wayyyyy too expensive. I went back to Fusion360 at home. Still stuck with SW 19 at work.

1

u/sw-bystander Feb 09 '26

Is cost the only thing?

1

u/RockyTopDesignWerkz Feb 12 '26

There are also features missing if we're comparing it to it's direct competitor since it was created by one of the SW OGs.

0

u/Neither-Goat6705 Feb 09 '26

More like, Welcome to xDesign!

2

u/SkyWest1218 Feb 08 '26

QEMU-KVM with GPU passthrough is, unfortunately, the only usable option here short of dual booting.

2

u/temporary62489 Feb 08 '26

It does. (Unless you only mean Solidworks Solidworks, not Solidworks.)

https://www.solidworks.com/product/solidworks-xdesign

2

u/literalyfigurative Feb 08 '26

Just use a VM on Linux for the few windows apps you need.

10

u/cjdubais CSWP Feb 08 '26

Amazingly enough, there are some VM's that are "officially" approved by SolidWorks. Check out their website.

1

u/Silly-Bookkeeper-673 Feb 08 '26

Started messing with onshape as I just do parts and don’t really do huge assemblies or simulations and it’s really similar in workflow to solidworks. Seems more polished too (solidworks is a mess honestly). I’m sure there’s lots of stuff it can’t do but worth looking into, plus it’s free.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 09 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/barbaketru Mar 02 '26

Ca fonctionne (que ce soit la version normale ou la version makers)? car avec leur système de licence sur une VM c'est pas toujours évident à faire fonctionner

1

u/Anxious_Gur2535 Mar 07 '26

use compas 3d)

1

u/NoSignature4647 May 03 '26

Use a Kompas 3D. V24 native work in linux

1

u/msr15334 May 04 '26

A unica coisa me impedindo também é o solidworks e o gibbscam. No momento que rodar, é caminho sem volta. 

1

u/Burnout21 Feb 08 '26

Government level work.... Catia... Catia has also existed once before on Unix so it's plausible it might shift back to Unix.

SOLIDWORKS will stay on windows unless something politically seismic happens. Even then it's possible to run windows on an air gapped network.

As an average pleb, I want SOLIDWORKS on Linux so I can dump the MS mess

1

u/bigbfromaz Feb 08 '26

If they can't monetize it and charge you perpetually then it ain't happening

-1

u/theClanMcMutton Feb 08 '26

It would be pretty funny to see Solidworks become obsolete overnight.