Greg.
I personally haven't used LTSpice for one simple reason - Linear Tech
hasn't ported it to Linux. They could at least port their SPICE engine;
that shouldn't be difficult at all, unless it is hopelessly intertwined
with their GUI (which would be a hopelessly stupid mistake on their
part). A command-line driven engine for Linux would be perfectly fine
as far as I am concerned.
This is the relevant part of the FAQ from the
help system regarding Linux/WINE:
Q. Do you have a version of LTspice for Linux?
A. Not a separate edition, but it does run under
WINE. The program has been tested on Linux
RedHat 8.0 with WINE version 20030219.
Q. OK, I've never used WINE, how do I install that
on my Linux box?
A. 1. Check with
www.winehq.com to find the current
version of WINE for your system. At the time
of this writing, for RedHat 8.0, this points
to
http://mecano.gme.usherb.ca/~vberon/wine
2. Copy the appropriate .rpm file to your machine
and open it from nautilus.
3. Get the file swcadiii.exe from
www.linear.com.
In an xterm, execute "wine swcadiii.exe" to
install LTspice.
4. There will now be a Linear Technology Logo on
your gnome desktop. Double click it to start
or type "wine scad3.exe" from an xterm to
start the program. That's it!
Q. The schematic fonts don't scale as smoothly under
WINE as Windows. Why is that?
A. WINE is doing the best best it can with the fonts
it finds. It will do better if you tell it how
to find the files arial.ttf and cour.ttf from
your Windows system.
Q. The PWL additional point editor doesn't look
right under WINE?
A. Try using the native Windows .dll from your
Windows system. The command line to then invoke
LTspice from WINE is:
wine -dll commctrl,comctl32=n scad3.exe.
Q. It seems LTspice is running slightly differently
under WINE/Linux than windows. Why is that?
A. LTspice detects whether or not it's running under
WINE. If so, it works around a few WINE issues.
You can force LTspice to think it's running under
WINE with the command line switch -wine. You can
force it to think it's not with the command line
switch -nowine in case you're interesting in
debugging WINE.
Q. Under Windows, LTspice extends the virtual
address space for waveform viewing to 64 bits.
Does that work under WINE?
A. Yes. It has been tested on waveform files over
5 Gigabytes in size.
Q. Under Linux, does it support unlimited component
count and depth of schematic hierarchy?
A. Yes. Opps, no. The maximum depth of hierarchy
is 64 levels but that limit is just there to
allow detection of infinite subcircuit recursion.
(Most "unlimited" SPICE's "limit" you to about 21
levels.) LTspice has no limit on node or
component count either per page or for the
entire circuit.
Q. Does cross-probing while simulation work with
those slick marching waveforms while running
under Linux?
A. Yes.
Q. So from what version on is LTspice supported
under WINE?
A. 2.01g.
--Mike