Can anyone give recommendations on what to do if you have to run Autodesk products (Revit. Autocad) for work? No, I can't swap them for open source alternatives such as FreeCAD as Im working with large international projects. Should I dual boot? Virtual machine inside Linux?
this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
1212 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
76274 readers
2937 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Controversial take:
If Autodesk products is how you make your money - Just use the OS your work provides you. Unless you're a freelancer, of which that's your work computer, and lock everything else down.
Work computer is not my problem. Nor am I putting anything personal on there. Microsoft wants to mine my company's info, let those two deal with that shit.
Thanks. I am a freelancer but I depend on the platforms my clients work with.
In order of priority:
- Check for a Linux-compatible alternative
- Try installing/running it via Bottles (a veeeery easy to use Wine frontend, hiding lots of wine complexity). Wine allows running most windows programs directly on Linux, with almost zero performance overhead.
- Try installing/running it via winboat (basically WSL in reverse - a well-integrated Windows VM or container running on Linux so you can run pesky Windows-only programs with it) (haven't used it myself yet)
- Use a regular full Windows VM on Linux (likely less well integrated and more resource intensive than #3, but maybe even more compatible). Set up a shared folder between host and VM for easy file transfers.
- Dual-boot Windows from another disk. Set up a shared folder/partition for file transfers.
Dual boot is an option, but I would go with 2 machines, one with Windows with only the Autodesk products and the other with Linux and all the other software.
I was thinking this too. Might get a second desktop and set that up
If you must use windows but hate using it, have a vm inside linux dockur/windows: Windows inside a Docker container.. But it is not the smoothest windows experience (it really is for backup when you really need windows): it is not as fast as directly booted windows and apps that can't run in a vm won't run here. If this does not work for you, then dual boot or just use windows if necessary!
The first option fits me well fyi :)
Winboat, for when you absolutely have to use something Windows based on your Linux machine.
load more comments
(6 replies)
For the gamers here using Linux: what about Discord? One of my only social outlets currently is unfortunately through Discord with some friends. There any issues with drivers for headsets and/or Discord having issues?
Edit: Thanks for the responses everyone!!
When I have to use discord, I use it in the browser. I don't trust the app not to get up to no good.
The app is just a browser wrapper over the web app.
I'm pretty sure the browser has more sandboxing than a desktop app running as me. The desktop app could do anything. Firefox tries to prevent webpages from doing nefarious stuff.
I use discord via browser on my Linux.
Discord has an official client for Linux. Also it works well in a Browser. I use it regularly without issues.
I use discord flatpak and it works flawlessly. You will need to check your specific headset of course
Discord is a horrible product and we should be steering people away from it and towards a federated alternative like Matrix.
That said, it works fine on Linux. The only issue is that updating it requires editing a text file because the incompetent cunts at the company can't be arsed to develop their product properly.
Discord works absolutely fine in Linux. I use "Vesktop" which is a desktop client for Discord. Performance is identical to using the Discord app in Windows AFAIK.
I have some issues making screenshares with the native app. But the browser version works flawlessly.
I had the same problem, but it turned out to be Wayland support, which is now fixed.
Have had absolutely 0 issues with the official discord linux desktop app for a couple years now. Works just the same as windows
Well, Discord is available on Linux, Archlinux for example has the package and I suppose this is true for many other distros.
view more: next ›