Moving from windows 11 to Linux Mint 22.2

Tom_H123
Tom_H123
in Linux

OK, I'm making the move from windows 11 to Linux Mint 22.2. Not dual boot.

I'm looking for comments, cautions, tips, warnings etc. with regard to BricsCAD.

Simple setup 1 chair, 2d.

Thanks

Comments

  • MilesAlex
    MilesAlex

    If you are customizing your workspace, i.e adding toolbars etc, save your .cui file to a back-up location. Quite often they are lost when booting Bricscad, I don't know why but this has been a problem for years…

    Using 2 different size monitors can be an issue with regards to scaling especially with high-res monitors. You can alter the font sizing in Mint but that messes up the scale of Bricscad. One fix is to start BC in the terminal with something like this: QT_SCALE_FACTOR=0.8 bricscadv26 %F; '0.80'

    Zooming and panning can be a little slower especially when you have a command active, again this has been a long term issue. You get used to it but can be frustrating.

    I find the Linux version faster when handling xref files and opening and closing large files.

    Random shut-downs without warning are fairly common to me but I'm using it for 2d & 3d BIM.

    Hope this helps…

  • Tom_H123
    Tom_H123

    Thanks MilesAlex for the helpful comments. Any issues to look out for during installation of BricsCAD on Linux?

  • MilesAlex
    MilesAlex
    https://forum.bricsys.com/discussion/comment/58183#Comment_58183

    No issues at all that I've had, on Mint or Ubuntu.

  • Conham
    Conham

    I was running Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop environment but encountered several graphical issues. Some dialogs were not visible, and certain text fields could not be selected for data input. For example, the plus sign in BIM Project Browser > Files, used for adding items, was not visible.

    My experience suggests that this is related to Cinnamon not working well with BricsCAD. When I installed and switched to the KDE desktop environment, the interface rendered correctly and the application behaved as expected.

    My assumption is that this can be explained by the fact that KDE, like BricsCAD, is built on the Qt framework, which results in correct dialog rendering. However, I have not found any official statement from Bricsys indicating that KDE should be preferred. The documentation only states that Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Fedora are supported .

  • Tom_H123
    Tom_H123

    Thanks Conham. My first run with BricsCAD and Linux Mint Cinnamon was not great. It was quirky at best and as MilesAlex mentioned, the second monitor was a real issue.

    I did try his 'fix' which helped a bit, but with the other issues, not a sustainable setup.

    I'm back to windows for the time being so I can get some stuff done but anxious to try KDE. Hope it might fix the second monitor thing too.

  • EdwardC
    EdwardC

    Running V26 OK on Linux Zorin 18, not nearly as bad on Mac OS. Windows is still the best environment for BricsCad. At this time (still) BricsCad is not native on ARM but ARES Commander is and runs very very nice on Mac.

  • razzle69
    razzle69

    I purchased Bricscad Lite over a year ago just because they offered a linux version. Formerly a heavy Autocad user, I switched from windows to Linux when microsoft announced windows 11 wouldn't run on 'older' machines. I have had good success with Bricscad on Linux Mint Cinnamon, now on 22.3. Only minor annoyances. My biggest complaint is that you can only print to file. You cannot print directly to a printer. For some reason bricscad can 'see' the system printers, but not print to them. So you print to pdf then print the pdf. Second complaint is a pet peeve. Bricscad doesn't set the dwg file type to a bricscad icon even though it sets the mimetype correctly. i had to manually configure the file icon to show dwg files with the bricscad logo.

    Overall I have been really happy with it on linux. I am no longer a heavy CAD user as I changed careers a long time ago. But I do use it regularly for personal projects.