How likely is it that Proton can be used to make native Windows applications (especially CAD-Software) run on Linux? Beside my own desperate desire to do that I guess there are others out there to eagerly switch OS. For the software providers it seems to be a great opportunity to acquired new customers (at first glance).
Proton is well developed for games, but not for apps. But Wine itself is not as well taken cared for. Without tricks, patches and prayers, most complex apps don’t run on it. Or if they load, they crash quickly afterwards.
Which CAD app are you trying to run? If it’s 2D, have you tried QCad/Cam?
Proton is a patched Wine with a translation layer from DirectX to Vulkan. Wine will run a lot of Windows cad software with varying success, particularly older versions and I am not sure how much general desktop applications benefit from the Valve sponsored improvements to gaming. It is a shame these CAD programs weren’t all built on game engines like Unity or Unreal instead of a bunch of Windows APIs with varied levels of implementation.
