femm in Ubuntu under Wine

Years ago I stumbled across femm, "finite element method magnetics" by David Meeker.  It's a sweet little magnetics solver with good looking results visualization, but alas, at the time it was only available for Windows.  I used it on my work machine - when I worked for companies that would let me do work, that is.   When I made the personal switch to Linux, I had to bid femm a fond farewell from my personal machine.


I have few regrets about my decision to use Ubuntu Linux.  The lack of femm was on that short list.  Fortunately, Dr Meeker & company have continued to work on their program over the years, and I find now that femm runs under Wine, the windows compatibility translation layer for POSIX-compatible operating systems.  Wine, you say?  Ok...


The internet bristles with "I hate Wine" types of comments.  Perhaps that is to be expected...

• the tinfoil-hatted Linux fanboys love to hate on Winblow$ stuff
• the Windows crowd loves to sneer at us Linux freetards
• Wine is a half-breed orphan seeking for the absent love of an adoptive parent

Personally, as long as it's free and open source I'm fine with it.  Heck I'd probably stop dis'ing   Windows if they'd just write specs; it was the constant churn, triggered by the Windows 7 "up" grade, that really ticked me off.


If you plan to do computer stuff for many years, a proprietary OS with no specification is simply a bad idea.  Specs assure you that you'll be able to read your own files later on.  Today, POSIX is the only standard I know of.  The good news is you can sign up with the Open Group and actually read those standards.  Not nerdy enough to worry about specs?  I understand, and honestly most people should be like you...  but if you're not smart enough to recognize the need for specs, then you should not be in charge of the I.T. department.


Enough ranting for now.  Here's a screen grab of femm-wine-ubuntu in action.  The triangle fill function is erratic but flux density shows up well enough for me without it.   

- nzvyyx