Thanks for your suggestion. I just downloaded and ran fritzing but sadly it seems to be another unusable program like VeeCad. Unfortunately, neither seems to do anything useful. VeeCad allows me to import a netlist from either LT-Spice or KiCad, but all components are U shaped and it seems that the symbols cannot be changed. Fritzing complains about a missing parts bin. I have installed the fritzing-parts package so the files are installed on my system. Having Ok'ed the errors that come up on startup, I can at least have a look around the GUI, but can't actually do anything. From what I can see, it seems to support breadboard, but not stripboard, perfboard or Veroboard, although I have seen examples of the later online.
I can't find any support for VeeCad, but at least Fritzing seems to have a forum I thought might be worth a try.
UPDATE1: I couldn't sign up to the Fritzing forum because the Captcha does not work! This is probably the reason:
https://tppwebsolutions.com/resolve-the-recaptcha-v1-is-shutdown-message/It seems that they haven't even noticed that they have been getting no signups since March!
UPDATE2: for anyone chancing upon this thread, I have now found a workaround for the issue with the missing core.fzb file message when running on Linux. Here is what i had to do:
sudo apt install fritzing
sudo apt install fritzing-parts
cd /usr/share/fritzing
ln -s /usr/share/fritzing/parts/bins bins
For some reason, although the package fritzing-data is installed by default, fritzing-parts which is also essential to the proper running of the program, is not.
At this point a launcher (desktop icon) can be created on the desktop, pointing to the program executable at /usr/bin/fritzing.
Next switch to the directory where launchers is stored:
cd ~/Desktop
Now edit Fritzing.desktop and add the following line:
Path=/usr/share/fritzing
While there, to get a nice icon also add:
Icon=fritzing_icon
Save the file. Fritzing should now start normally from the launcher.
Explanation:
The part bins data is installed in /usr/share/fritzing/parts/bins. On startup, Fritzing is looking for various program components including the parts bins in a path relative to the startup directory. However it looks for the parts bins in bins/... instead of parts/bins/.... So the above steps create a symlink in /usr/shared/fritzing called bins and maps it to /usr/shared/fritzing/parts/bins, which is the actual bins path. A launcher is then created to start the program and /usr/shared/fritzing is manually added as the startup path. It should also be possible to create a startup shell script and cd to /usr/shared/fritzing prior to starting the program.
BTW, it seems that I have the latest version, 0.9.3b, which is dated 2016, so it seems there has not been another release for two years. Now that I have it running, I will have a play with it, but wouldn't this now be considered abandonware?