Got to be fair, since the 1.x update it got so much more usable for me

Oh, I know. I am familiar with the fusion workflow and it generally just works - even when you mess with a feature way earlier in your timeline.

I model some vaguely complex things and find that I often fiddle with things. From the last I looked into it, OSS CAD didn't handle this very well.

Or if like me, you want something closer to fusion or Solidworks, there’s Onshape. At least until it enshitifies.

Hah, I was about to say they seem to have misspelled FreeCAD.

That's unhelpful. The person might be a professional in a work that mandates using Fusion360. "FreeCAD is the best Linux supported CAD program but you should try running a VM inside of Linux and see if fusion 360 works a" is way more helpful.

I've had issues with FreeCAD being less performant and freezing or crashing when trying to make more complex parts.

Fairly rare though and I've been able to work around it

I haven't looked into this at all, but wasn't Microsoft threatening to block updates if your system doesn't meet the requirements?

Freecad has gotten much better with the recent updates.

It's UI is (obviously) different than fusion, but so are other CAD programs.

Sure, it may not be at the stage where it could be used to do 100% of the mechanical and electrical design on a jet helicopter, but how many people need that level of complexity for their projects?

OnShape is just waiting to be enshittified

Sweet, thanks!

This, maybe with something with good wine/gpu compatibility like CachyOs. And if it fails there are ways to install windows 11 on IvyBridge

Yeah, that is what I would have done. Check out Tiny10 and Tiny11, which is stripped down, but totally functional Windows versions that is perfect to use as base images for a VM. I used the default VM/QUEMU app that ships with Fedora, called Box (I think?). But you could install VirtualBox as well.

There are also scripts to unlock upgrade on „unsupported” processors which still technically work with 11

Yep. Dont need to fuck and install it on other random PCs just login and use it. Its even for a mobile app, probably better for tablets.

And unlimited free designs. Yes there public but I'm not making $$$$ from my designs.

Does FreeCAD do CAM too?

I've dabbled in Linux in the past and spend the majority of my time popping between windows and mac os. I also spend a decent amount of time in powershell/terminal, but largely in the context of work.

I'm not against investing the time learn new things, but time is very scarse these days with two younger kids.

My modeling workflow is often iterative and fusion's timeline makes it very easy to edit a feature from way back when and then propagate that change through all subsequent steps that reference that feature. You can also add entirely new features and then update the next step in the timeline to reference them. The last time I looked at alternatives this either wasn't supported or was fickle, but based on some comments in this post that may have changed. I'll have to give FreeCAD a try.

I second freeCAD for complicated designs. For simple stuff I use tinkercad which runs from web browser

Fusion said it will stop working. It's normally a licensed product, although home users can get it for free. I suspect they have some kind of authentication mechanism built in and could prevent it from working if desired.

I'm pretty sure it eventually stopped working altogether when Windows 7 was cut off. I'm like 80% sure that's what eventually force me to upgrade to 10 but it's been a while.

Yeah it's annoying still, I have an 80gb partition I put windows on for work purposes, I told it to check for updates yesterday when I was signing off for work. It popped up with an option that said Security updates are ending Oct 14th, and a box to click to enroll for extended updates till Oct 14th, 2026. I clicked it and it said I was enrolled for another year. It's a sure sign they are trying to force people to move to Windows 11, but apparently they will be making the security updates all the same and not sending them to everyone by default.

I've had it run on wine a few years back, but it's hard to say if it would still run now as they change it all the time. Freecad is ok for simpler designs, but if you do complex cad work, you hit its limits (clunky and buggy). There's always onshape though, works perfectly fine on Linux.

This has been my experience. I couldn't even get logged in to Fusion via Bottles.

At this point I want to give Linux an earnest go on this box. I bought a second SSD and will just unplug the windows drive for a while.

I am curious if fusion will support LTSC and/of whatever version of 11 they call out.

If you're going to pirate, you might as well get Windows Server. It runs everything without any of the Windows garbage preinstalled like Xbox.

Pressure them about what exactly? Making the product for Linux or extending Windows 10 support?