What's a good opensource free program for drawing and creating electronic schematics.

[futz]

W.I.T.F..?....Joke..?? What do you mean by that..???
That thing is freakin awesome... I want one, I'm sure they work just fine...

Useless, except in some limited cases, like soldering a few wires. Look at the fatty tip on that thing! I solder tiny components and surface mount stuff on circuit boards. That stupid thing just isn't going to do the job. It's too big and clumsy.

And for surface mount it won't work at all. It needs electrical contact to heat up, since it's not hot all the time. Can't get that on surface mount components.

Try soldering a few hundred joints on a pc board with it and I bet you'll fire that silly toy across the room and buy a proper anti-static temperature-controlled real soldering iron.

They're marketed to their target audience - home-handyman-do-it-yourselfers who just want to solder the odd joint.

Here's one of several reviews I looked at:
http://www.epemag.wimborne.co.uk/cold-soldering.htm

[coder_]

How about tkgate? -- http://www.tkgate.org/

[jason.b.c]

And for surface mount it won't work at all. It needs electrical contact to heat up, since it's not hot all the time. Can't get that on surface mount components.

It dosen't need electrical contact to heat up , Just contact with a metalic surface...

[futz]

It dosen't need electrical contact to heat up , Just contact with a metalic surface...

Same thing - the metallic (conductive) surface must short across the two halves of the tip for current to flow and produce heat.

Also, these things are scary with sensitive components. Read the second page of that review carefully. Get a real iron if you're even a little bit serious about doing electronics with it.

[slimdog360]

How about tkgate? -- http://www.tkgate.org/

yeah but that only does logic simulation etc. Atleast as far as I can tell.
We need something like multisim or protel for linux. I likes the fancy looking stuff.

[nousefreak]

I installed eagle with wine, but i only get weard signs in stead of word like projects

i,heard you talking about 32 respo is that something you have to change in wine (please tell me how if so)

here a sample of the crap i get wel installing eagle with wine
http://users.telenet.be/de_lotus/eagle_under_wine.jpg

[UbuWu]

http://gnomefiles.org/subcategory.php?sub_cat_id=107