After now two years of development, we are very proud to release our first stable version of CAELinux, called CAELinux 2007.
This release contains many enhancements, new softwares and should give you a much better user experience.

CAELinux 2007 is based on the latest PCLinuxOs 2007 distribution which supports the most recent hardwares / chipset for a much better compatibility and ease of use. 
For example, CAELinux 2007 now supports directly 4Gb of Ram and up to 4 CPUs and boots now correctly on recent Intel chipsets.

Additionnally, the release of CAELinux 2007 is also particular in the sense that it contains the very first public release of the GPL Salome_Meca package developed by EDF (and many others). This brand new package represents the fusion of Code-Aster finite element solver and the Salome CAD/Pre/Post GUI and allows to run a complete FEA study directly from the SALOME graphical user interface. With this new GPL package, Open-Source FEA is making a jump in ease of use and gets always closer to commercial FEA softwares!!
We would like to thank here EDF for the confidence they have placed  in CAELinux to distribute this new GPL package!

Features

• CAELinux is an installable LiveDVD Linux distribution based on PcLinuxOs 2007: a user-friendly live Linux distribution, with enhanced hardware detection and a very efficient hard disk installer.
• Contains the following CAE softwares:
  • Pre-post processors & CAD: Salome_Meca 2007, Salome v3.2.6, GMSH 2, Paraview, XMGrace, CGX, QCad
  • Finite Element solvers: Salome_Meca 2007, Code_Aster v9.1, Elmer v5, Tochnog, Calculix 1.7, Impact 0.75, getDP, Dynela,
  • Computationnal Fluid Dynamics: OpenFOAM v1.4.1, OpenFlower, Gerris flow solver, Code-Saturne
  • Multibody dynamics : MBDyn, EasyAnim
  • Mathematics: GNU Octave (+OctaveForge), Scilab, wxMaxima, R & Rkward.
• Is provided with interactive flash tutorials, videos as well as examples to start learning how to use the included open-source softwares for realistic simulation
• This new release includes ready-to-install packages for 3D accelerated video drivers (ATI & NVidia cards).
• Available in two versions:
• a LiveDVD ISO image to use or install the preconfigured Linux environment with optimum performance.
• a VMWare virtual machine to use CAELinux environment directly from your current OS (Windows or Linux OS)

LiveDVD version

Requirements

This LiveDVD distribution is based on a compressed file system on the DVD and requires that the system decompresses all the necessary softwares into RAM in order to run. In LiveDVD mode, a strict minimum of 512Mb is required to use this distribution for simple FE analysis. But you can create a Linux swap partition on one hard disk to help or choose the option to install the distribution to hard disk for optimal performance. However, 1Gb of RAM (or more) is highly recommended for every day work. At the moment most of the classical chipsets for Intel (P4, Pentium M, Core2Duo) and AMD (Athlon XP, Athlon 64, Athlon X2) platforms are supported with some exceptions especially concerning external USB modems, specific laptop devices (some wireless network cards) and very specific hardware like Raid controllers. For more help on hardware support / detection / troubleshooting, you should refer to PCLinuxOS forums : http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/

Instructions

• First, download the ISO image from the link below. Then you should check the md5sum of your downloaded files to check if it is not corrupt: in Linux, use the "md5sum" command in a console, in Windows, you should download the "md5sum.exe" command line utility from here.
• Burn the ISO image on a DVD+/-R/RW with your favorite DVD burner software. Be sure to select the "Burn Image" option in your DVD burning software. If unsure, read the help of your DVD burning software.
• Download and read the "CAELinux 2007 Installation Manual "
• Restart your PC, insert the LiveDVD and verify that your BIOS is configured to boot from CD/DVD drive.
• Boot from the LiveDVD: you will see a boot menu with several options. Usually you don't need to select any special option here but if you have some problems during the boot process, some alternative options can be selected. For the moment, just press "Enter" to accept the default mode.
• When the boot process is finished, you will need to login with the following account:
  login = caelinux , password = caelinux    (for normal every day use)
  login = root , password = root    (super administrator account for installation only)
• When the KDE desktop is finally loaded, you can start your work as if you were running from an hard disk. Note that all the readable partitions of your HDD will be allready accessible (read-only for NTFS, read-write for FAT/ext2-3) and your USB key or external HDD will be recognized when you plugin it in (read-write access).
• Now you can start your first tutorial on FE modelling with Salome_Meca: just click the "CAELinux Docs" link on the desktop, open "GettingStarted.html" and follow the first tutorial on the FE analysis of a 2-stroke engine piston (from a STEP CAD geometry).

VMWare version

Requirements

The VMWare version of CAELinux Beta 3b requires a powerfull computer to run smoothly: at least a Pentium 4 2Ghz with 768Mb of RAM and 15Gb of free space on a FAT32, NTFS or EXT2/3 partition. To run the Virtual Machine, you will absolutely need the free VMWare Player or VMWare Workstation (>=5.0) and a recent version of WinRAR (3.x) to decompress the package.

Instructions

• First, download the RAR archive from the link below.
• Decompress the archive (use for example WinRAR) in a partition with at least 15Gb of free space. This will create a directory named CAELinux2007.
• If you don't have VMWare Workstation v5.0 or higher, download and install the free VMWare player.
• Start VMWare Workstation or VMWare Player and open CAELinux VMWare machine (.vmx file) in your CAELinux2007 directory.

Documentation

For the moment, a first documentation is available in the GettingStart.html  & CAELinux 2007 Installation Manual  file included in the distribution. Several tutorials, videos and examples are included on the distribution and also downloadable on the wiki

Packages

CAELinux2007 is available in two packages:  the ISO image version to run as a LiveDVD or to install the system on a native partition or the Virtual Machine version to run CAELinux 2007 from within your current OS.

LiveDVD (ISO image):

Size: 2.4 Gb

MD5Sum: 71e47a740fd70f330361bac30469451d

VMWare virtual machine (RAR archive):

Size:  1.8 Gb

MD5Sum:  406718b22874221b7aa261b989c08aa0

Download links

Direct FTP / HTTP download :  Please fill in the download form HERE

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