After one more year of development, we are proud to release our new stable version of CAELinux, called CAELinux 2010. This release is a complete rebuild of CAELinux for X86 64 bit architecture to use the latest Intel / AMD cpus at their maximum. CAELinux 2010 is now based on the latest Long Term Support release of Ubuntu, one of the most popular linux distribution, in order to offer the best possible user experience.
CAELinux 2010 is built on the basis of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS AMD64 distribution with the latest updates and should support the most recent hardwares / chipset for one of the best compatibility and ease of use in the Linux world. It comes with a kernel in version 2.6.32-24 with support for 64 bit memory addressing and multiple CPUs.
Additionnally, CAELinux 2010 contains the latest release of the GPL Salome_Meca 2010 package developed by EDF (64bit) integrated with two versions of the finite element solver Code-Aster STA10.1 (both 64bits) optimized either for OpenMP or MPI parallelism. Salome_Meca 2010 is now based on Salome v5.1.3 CAD/Pre/Post GUI and allows to run a complete FEA / CFD study directly from the SALOME graphical user interface.
CAELinux 2010 also continues to integrate great open source CFD software like Code-Saturne 2.0and OpenFOAM 1.7 (both 64bit/MPI) that can be interfaced with numerous pre processing tools like Salome, GMSH, Netgen, and the more CFD oriented meshers enGrid 1.2 and Discretizer/SnappyHexMesh. With these software, Open-Source FEA & CFD is continuing its progression towards ease of use and parallel computing power to get closer to commercial FEA & CFD codes!
Multiphysics simulation is also very efficiently carried out using Elmer FEM 5.5 and its easy to use ElmerGUI interface. Based on a segregated solver approach for each physics, multiple physical behaviours can easily be coupled with Elmer, for example like: diffusion & heat equation can easily be coupled with Navier-Stokes fluid flow simulation, thermo-mechanical coupling and even fluid-structure interaction.
Features
- CAELinux is an installable LiveDVD Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 64 bit: a very user-friendly live Linux distribution, with excellent hardware detection and a very simple hard disk installer.
- Contains the following CAE softwares:
- Pre-post processors & CAD: Salome_Meca 2010, Salome 5.1.3, GMSH 2.4, Netgen , Tetgen, enGrid, Discretizer / Discretizer::Setup, Paraview, OpenDX, CGX, QCad, FreeCAD, SagCAD, ElmerGUI / ElmeFront / ElmerGrid
- Finite Element solvers: Salome_Meca 2010, Code_Aster STA10.1, Elmer v5.5 , Calculix 2.1, Impact 0.76, Dynela, Fenics
- Computationnal Fluid Dynamics: OpenFOAM v1.7, the latest release of Gerris flow solver and GFSView, Code-Saturne 2.0 with CFD analysis wizard and tutorial , Elmer Solver, air foil and airplane analysis tools (Xfoil, Javafoil, AVL, Datcom+)
- Multibody dynamics : MBDyn with its Blender interface and EasyAnim
- 3D bio-medical image processing: ITK-Snap, Image J, Voxel_Mesher
- Mathematics: GNU Octave +QtOctave, Scilab, wxMaxima, R & Rkward, Gnuplot, Latex, Labplot, g3data, Scipy.
- 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
- Ubuntu 10.04 already includes open-source 3D drivers for recent video cards, but it can also automatically install packages for 3D accelerated proprietary video drivers (ATI & NVidia cards) once installed on hard disk.
- This new release is only available as a LiveDVD ISO image to use directly or to install the CAELinux OS on your computer for optimum performance.However, on recent CPUs with hardware virtualization extensions, it runs very well in Virtual Machine software like VirtualBox or VMWare.
CAELinux 2010 LiveDVD
Requirements
CAELinux 2010 is only available in 64bit version, this means that you will absolutelly need an X86_64 compatible CPU to run this version. Most recent Intel and AMD CPUS are 64 bit : for example Intel Core2Duo or Core2Quad, Core i7 and XEON 64 bit or AMD Athlon 64, Athlon X2, Athlon FX, Phenom, and Opteron. Please note that most Intel CoreDuo (not Core2Duo), Atom and Pentium 4 are NOT 64 bit compatible! Please check your hardware compatibilty first!! Using a 64 bit OS is necessary to use more than 2Gb RAM per application and thus allows for large "industrial scale" simulation capabilities. If your CPU is not 64 bit, you can still use our previous release CAELinux 2008 which is available in both LiveDVD and VMWare virtual machine version: see this page for more information on CAELinux 2008.
This LiveDVD distribution is highly compressed on the DVD and requires that the system decompresses all the necessary softwares into RAM in order to run. In LiveDVD mode, a minimum of 1024Mb is recommended 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, 2Gb of RAM (or more) is highly recommended for every day work. An hard-disk installation of CAELinux 2010 requires at least a 20Gb ext3/4 partition for "/" and a 4Gb swap partition. At the moment most of the classical chipsets for Intel and AMD 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 the great Ubuntu documentation, wikis and forums : http://www.ubuntu.com
Procedure
- First, download the ISO image from the link below. Then you should check the md5sum of your downloaded file 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. Alternativelly, you can install the LiveDVD on a USB key with the simple and efficient tool UNetBootin available here: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
- Read the "Ubuntu Installation Manual " and associated documentation at Ubuntu.com
- Restart your PC, insert the LiveDVD (or USB key) and verify that your BIOS is configured to boot from CD/DVD drive (resp. USB external drive).
- Boot from the LiveDVD: you will see a prompt, Press ENTER and then a boot menu will appear 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 GNOME 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 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 "GettingStared" link on the desktop and follow the first tutorial on the FE analysis of a 2-stroke engine piston (from a STEP CAD geometry).
- If you are happy with the distribution, you can then install it to hard disk. The installer can even resize Windows or Linux partitions to free up some space and install CAELinux in parallel to your existing OS.
Documentation
For the moment, a first documentation is available in the GettingStart.html & "Ubuntu Installation Manual " file included in the distribution. Several tutorials, videos and examples are included on the distribution and also downloadable on the wiki
Files
LiveDVD (ISO image):
Size: 3.7 GB (3989866496 bytes)
MD5Sum: 24097b59a810d407ab09ab0a01b5aa9a
Download links
Direct FTP / HTTP download :