( ESNUG 299 Item 7 ) ---------------------------------------------- [9/21/98]
Subject: ( ESNUG 297 #4 ) More On The EDA-Should-Support-Linux Debate
> hello john,
>
> veriwell used to support a verilog simulator for the linux platform. i
> received the following message from veriwell customer support (indicating
> that veriwell not longer supports linux) ...
From: Elliot Mednick <elliot@wellspring.com>
John,
Since I'm the founder of Wellspring, which sells Veriwell, it looks like I
can't stay out of this much longer. I can argue from both sides of the
fence as both a (former) Linux vendor and from a (yes, former) Linux user.
Here goes my world.
Taking a user perspective, I share most of the favorable opinions of Linux.
It's decent, cheap, fairly stable, and now supported by a commercial entity
(Red Hat, etc.). I used to use it regularly, but I soon ran into it's big
weakness: lack of specific hardware support. I have two PCs, one a Dell
notebook and the other a generic clone, each with some piece of hardware
that is not supported. At least by Red Hat. So, I had to give it up.
(FYI, I ran OS/2 for a long time, so I'm not adverse to running non-Windows
operating systems. But, now I have to.)
For a vendor perspective, the cruel reality is that Linux users are
inherently cheapskates. That is, the culture around Linux is that it
should be free (freely available) and almost all of the tools running under
Linux should also be free/cheap. That's why Linux is so popular. (If you
disagree on that assertion, before Linux you could buy "Coherent", a full
Unix OS for the PC for $100. Linux drove them away.) There seems to be a
natural resistance around having relatively expensive tools running under
Linux, especially outside of the EDA industry.
During the time Wellspring supported a Linux version of VeriWell, we had
lots of downloads of the free version, but very few sales (which, I
suppose, could mean something else...). So, the sales of the Windows
version was supporting the Linux support. We could not maintain this
drain. We had problems keeping up with the kernel, as well. So, as
altruistic as we would like to be, we could not continue to sink resources
into something that, albiet popular, was not generating revenue.
Additional ports of software are Really Hard to support. At one time,
Wellspring supported 6 ports of VeriWell. For each port, there was the
initial porting effort, and then the ongoing support, release, regression,
etc. issues as well as maintenance of the respective platforms and
operating environments.
Other companies have attempted Linux versions of their products and have
given up. As Richard Goering pointed out, maybe there are lots of
individual engineers who use Linux, but the CAD buyers aren't interested.
It is a lot of effort to support another OS. And, the critical mass of
products have to be there (simulators, synthesis, etc.). And, for a short
time, there almost was a critical mass at the lower end (Exemplar,
Wellspring, Fintronic, etc.). But, this is a chicken-and-egg problem,
isn't it.
So, here is what I did: I punted on Linux. I run Win95 on my notebook. I
downloaded the GNU-WIN32 package from http://www.cygnus.com which contains
a bash shell and almost all of the Unix utilities you would even need and
they run under Win95/NT. I run GNU Emacs and Perl 5.004 on my notebook
(Xemacs is also available). I have the advantage of being able to run the
Windows tools AND can run Unix scripts/commands/etc as well as the
commandline versions of the CAD tools. X11 is also available.
There. The best of both worlds. Of course, someone will point out
something that GNU-WIN32 won't do, but it works for me.
- Elliot Mednick
Wellspring Solutions, Inc. Salem, NH
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