

While some of these products may be quite capable, they suffer from one huge drawback – you are locked into their services.

Some commercial PCB fabricators offer their own free online software. I believe the ones listed run under all three mainstream operating systems, but I am only certain about Linux versions. Since I use Linux on my PC, I have only looked at the packages than run under Linux. NOTE: There may be some other applications than the ones I have mentioned. This guide will look at the options available and make recommendations based on the author’s knowledge and preferences. While there are a plethora of commercial products, most of them expensive – very expensive, there are relatively few that are low cost or free for the open source designer. When you finish the design and prototyping of your project and you want to make a PCB, you need to use some kind of PCB layout software.
