Here's a little experiment that happened a few months ago .... Senior capstone. They need to do a PC board. I gave them a choice of either Eagle (runs on Windows) or PCB (runs on anything except windows).
In either case, they were provided a machine, with the disk wiped clean, and the install CD's, and instructions: "These machines are yours for the term. Install whatever you want." There were 5 teams. One team installed Mandrake and PCB on the provided machine, and used it successfully. One team installed PCB on a Macintosh at home. Two teams installed PCB on a Linux box at home. One team installed Eagle on a PC at home. The team that used Eagle had by far the most trouble with the project. This comparison added a snag that most leave out: In most comparisons, Windows is given the advantage because it is already installed and supported. If you want to use Linux you need to do it yourself. In this case, even to use Windows, they had to install it themselves.
