FreeCAD has long had open source disease in that it is very powerful and yet a pain in the ass to work with partially through crap UI design.

1.0 includes a lot of changes that address this. They've modernized a lot of it, added a lot of missing features, and brought a lot of things up to modern snuff.

There are things I like about FreeCAD better than Fusion360, for example FreeCAD has a spreadsheet built into it. Fusion360, last time I used it, had a kind of underbaked Parameters list that you couldn't even sort, the ability to have a spreadsheet for your dimensions and such.

All Parametric CAD software is complicated to use, you need to wrap your head around designing with rules, but once you get that basically all of them unlock.

No. The people who struggle with FreeCAD struggle because they leaned something else first. Its the same reason Photoshop trained users complain about GIMP while people who learned GIMP first dont complain.

Learn FreeCAD first, and you won't be handicapped

CAD is a bit like programming, there's a lot of ways to do any given task. That can make it tricky if you are doing some tutorials that use one workflow, and then start doing tutorials that use a different workflow.

If you want to learn it, do yourself a favor and take time to find a tutorial that goes from start to finish doing the type of project you want to do so you don't get frustrated when you get midway through.

Like others said, if you are used to doing something in a different CAD software, you might find that the same workflow is clunky in FreeCAD, but if you start out with a workflow that works well in FreeCAD, you are fine.

You can even run some of them under linux with this driver: https://github.com/FreeSpacenav/spacenavd

Awesome!!

For some people it simply does not help with the workflow. For me it is a significant upgrade as it allows me to never use the normal mouse to move around in 3D, and allows me to quickly move the view to where I want it to be. Without it, moving in 3D just feels clunky to me.

But as I said, it is a preference.

I really got used to a space mouse with a piece of software called Geomagic Wrap, which we were using to take point clouds from a 3D scanner and turn them into solid models. Part of that process involves turning the model every which way to look for holes and whatnot in it to correct, and being able to use both hands for this really sped up the process. At this point I just cannot stand doing the Click-a click-a click-a click-a required to move a model around with the mouse. And if I'm modeling something large like a building or a landscape in a video game? Forget it. I want to be able to fly the camera around.

I don't have as many hours in SolidWorks but for me, trying to navigate without a 3d mouse feels like riding a bike with square tires. I could manage to do it but why. At the end of the day though it's a preference. Likewise I have to murder the x and y axis on it for things to click in my head, which is another preference. I suppose growing up as a gamer may have something to do with that. I don't want to move/rotate the object, I want to move/rotate the camera..