I could go on for days about the problems with medical devices. I write software for one of those at my day job and as much as our team would love to port the software to something other than Windows, that would be a logistical nightmare.
The thunderbolt connection alone can break because of a thousand factors, even on the exact combination of hardware and operating system it was tested with. Processing of medical images is often very GPU-heavy which gives us the same problems as with CAD software.
Even if you get all the technical problems out of the way, medical devices need to be certified before you’re allowed to use them for diagnostics. This often includes an exact specification of the platform you run the software on. If you just take something that’s certified for “Windows 10 between 20H2 and 22H2, Intel or AMD CPU, device driver version 8.1.23” and try to run it on Wine, I would expect the American FDA, German TÜV and Chinese NMPA to fight over who gets to kick your door in first. It might be possible to get a certification for a Linux version but probably only for one specific combination of distribution, display server and desktop environment.
I could go on for days about the problems with medical devices. I write software for one of those at my day job and as much as our team would love to port the software to something other than Windows, that would be a logistical nightmare.
The thunderbolt connection alone can break because of a thousand factors, even on the exact combination of hardware and operating system it was tested with. Processing of medical images is often very GPU-heavy which gives us the same problems as with CAD software.
Even if you get all the technical problems out of the way, medical devices need to be certified before you’re allowed to use them for diagnostics. This often includes an exact specification of the platform you run the software on. If you just take something that’s certified for “Windows 10 between 20H2 and 22H2, Intel or AMD CPU, device driver version 8.1.23” and try to run it on Wine, I would expect the American FDA, German TÜV and Chinese NMPA to fight over who gets to kick your door in first. It might be possible to get a certification for a Linux version but probably only for one specific combination of distribution, display server and desktop environment.