Thinkpads Forum

So... Windows has finally become annoying enough that it has convinced me to jump ship to Linux in the near future. I'm preparing to make that move, and had a few (admittedly uninformed) questions about it. I do a lot of CAD work, need my nVidia GPU to behave, and would like something stable, so RHEL workstation seemed the obvious choice.

Has anyone put RHEL workstation on a modern Thinkpad with an nVidia card, and if so, anything noteworthy about the process? I haven't touched Linux beyond the Juniper CLI in a few years, so I'm not exactly up to speed.

Beyond that, is anyone using a Windows VM or a compatibility layer to get Windows software (I'm namely looking at Solidworks, Creo, Inventor, and AutoCAD) working? I'm still trying to figure out my best option there, but again, GPU is a must.

Thanks for any insight!

I can't say anything about RHEL Workstation specifically, but for virtualizing Windows I generally like either Oracle's VirtualBox if you want to get up and running quickly. Last I checked, both Virtualbox and libvirtd have decent support for PCIe passthrough, which should get your GPU sent through to the VM.