you basically have to have a religious commitment to Open Source to use it
LTspice which is free, actively supported by paid full time staff, has many more eyes on it including the company that makes/supports it using it for chip development and it has updates for bugs weekly
the LTspice "eat their own dog food" part is critical - real engineers with jobs requiring electronic design productivity are using this, can walk down the hall an have a talk with the developer if something about the SW is holding them back
LTspice is an engineer's Spice but is lacking as a learning tool
LTspice which is free, actively supported by paid full time staff, has many more eyes on it including the company that makes/supports it using it for chip development and it has updates for bugs weekly
the LTspice "eat their own dog food" part is critical - real engineers with jobs requiring electronic design productivity are using this, can walk down the hall an have a talk with the developer if something about the SW is holding them back
LTspice is an engineer's Spice but is lacking as a learning tool
I don't have the $1000 a year it takes to buy new computers to keep up with Microsoft's runaway operating systems. I disrespect touch screen and mouse input anyway, as a > 200 WPM typist and a fast pianist I prefer the alt and control keys which are increasingly not supported in this one finger world. Whenever I buy a used computer, it comes with windows and a serial # sticker, but never a Windows source disk. As soon as Microsoft finds out through the internet that I've bought a used computer, they issue unrequested "updates" then insist I insert the Windows source disk or suffer reboot every 11 minutes. Nobody will sell a Windows source disk for anything older than 2 generations back, currently Win 7. No computer I own will run anything as advanced as Win 7. I don't have the $500 a year it requires to buy Microsoft personal training to learn about the secret features they hide the op systems, the ones with no name. I did some keystroke once to Windows XP to destroy the status bar on the bottom, no book at the library, nor any help file had any help on what I had done, what the name of the status bar was, or anyway to get it back but to wipe the hard drive and reload windows from the source disk, The computer shop that installed the Win XP to fit the new mainboard that wouldn't run Win 98, did not give me a source disk, and they also threw away my Win 98 source disk. I've never seen an apple mac ever for sale on craigslist here. I've seen stacks of blown up MAC mainboards at the computer repair shop, not for sale, and definitely not accompanied by Mac OS source disks. So LT spice is out. I've been running ubuntu flavor linux for 6 years. Now Ubuntu is so advanced, no computer I can afford will run it, I have to run Lubuntu 13 with a lighter user interface. Geda schematic editor came with lubuntu 13, I've used it to make a schematic diagram. People tell me Geda comes with ngspice, but I can't find any commands or anything in the help file. There are spice models in the device list, and I've installed power supplies and an AC input spice model. But nothing is happening to produce any output numbers. I'm back to diagrams in pencil on notebook paper, and hardwire "models" of my amp. If everybody here is so rich they can dance to Microsoft's tune, how come they aren't buying their amplifiers instead of building them? For art I play piano. I don't need to build anything new, my 1941 Steinway piano still works well. It is the record player that keeps blowing up or sounding puny, which needs repairs and upgrades. I'm trying to get my ST120 up to at least 1971 this week, without diving off into the 60 W peak IC world.
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