Print
Category: Stable versions
Hits: 213567

Although significantly delayed, CAELinux  is proud to release its new stable version of CAELinux, named CAELinux 2013.

Highlights

This release is built on an updated Xubuntu 12.04 LTS  64 bit base with a focus on the upgrade of the CAE softwares, development of additionnal Wizards and expanding the capabilities of the distribution to encompass the full cycle of a product development, including 3D printing, CAM / g-code generation,  electronic PCB design and even micro controller programming. CAELinux 2013 is now an even more complete open source engineering platform !

CAELinux 2013 contains updated versions of the Salome_Meca 2013.1 and Code-Aster STA11.3  FEA suite with MPI parallelism solvers, OpenFOAM 2.1.1 integrated with Helyx-OS or Discretizer GUI for settings up your CFD simulations (OpenFOAM 1.6ext is available in the repositories), Code-Saturne 3.0 MPI with a simple wizard GUI to get started easily, Calculix 2.6 FEA Multithread version with its own wizard, ElmerFEM 6.2 with high performance MPI solvers, the latest version of Freecad parametric CAD modeler, a custom PyCAM 0.6 release for 3D milling g-code generation with OpenSCAM for milling simulation, Cura for easy and fast 3D printing g-code generation, GEDA and Kicad electric design suites with many tools for PCB isolation milling and finally the famous Arduino microcontroller development environment.

With these software, Open-Source engineering is continuing its progression towards ease of use, completeness and  gets closer to commercial codes!

Features

CAELinux 2013 LiveDVD

Requirements

CAELinux 2013 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 i3, i5, 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 analysis and hardware compatibility testing. For optimal performance it is however recommended to create a Linux swap partition on one hard disk or even better to install the distribution to hard disk. For professionnal use at least 4Gb of RAM (more is better) is highly recommended for every day work. An hard-disk installation of CAELinux 2013 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 the latest  graphics adapters and some 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

  1. 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.
  2. 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/
  3. Read the "Ubuntu Installation Manual " and associated documentation at Ubuntu.com
  4. 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).
  5. 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.
  6. When the XFCE 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).
  7. 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).
  8. 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: 3.9 GB (4113563648 bytes)

MD5Sum: ebb87625baaa143a83e4b296ddf4b02a

Download links

FTP / HTTP / Bittorrent downloads :  

 

CAELinux 2013 on Amazon EC2

To use CAELinux 2013 on Amazon EC2 cloud in US-East & Europe regions (both standard and cluster compute instances), please have a look at this thread on the forums

 

Order CAELinux 2013 on DVD

If you prefer to directly receive a DVD of CAELinux 2013, you can order a copy of CAELinux 2013 LiveDVD here. The CAELinux DVD is the exact same copy as the ISO image that you can download here and it is offered at a unique price of 20 euros + 5 euros for  world-wide delivery. Placing an order and processing payment is simple & secure (provided by Paypal) and most credit cards / countries are supported.

Order a copy of CAELinux LiveDVD 2013