Camera Solution - Linux 29 August 2024

[ngh (Gracie)]

The camera interface in Lightburn ceased to display the view of the working area after a recent update of lightburn or Linux Mint Debian Edition (I suspected Lightburn judging by how many other Lightburn users have a similar issue!)

We tried many different ways to get the camera view back with no success.

The camera worked in all the other software packages, but not in Lightburn only presenting a blank (black) screen.

We did notice a mention of Manjaro Linux in a forum post from 2022.

As we only use Lightburn on a stand alone system, we downloaded Manjaro, installed it, tried it and got the camera interface going in Lightburn. Eventually…

Steps we took:

Download x86 – Manjaro downloaded the Cinnamon edition (what we are used to in Linuix Mint)

We tried to do a parallel install hoping for a dual boot, but that didn’t work out so we went for a full install.

This PC’s sole use is for controlling the Sculpfun S30 laser, it had nothing of importance to keep on the system.
So after removing the lightburn licence, we blew away the existing Linux Mint and installed Manjaro.

No issues with the installation at all.

Troubles we did have:
Geting the Network, had to add Samba.

Installed Lightburn and re-added the licence and the CAMERA WORKED but not the connection to the laser.

Checked “dmesg” and the connection was being recognised as ttyUSB0.

So we had the connection but not the access.

The USB connection ttyUSB0 was not being used for the laser connection.

So after some searching we found that the group for the ttyUSB0 was uucp …

We added the user to the uucp group.

Restarted the system and EVERYTHING WORKED!!!

Did a Camera Calibration and a test burn and all seemed OK!

Though we do feel VERY VERY BETRAYED that Lightburn will not continue to support Linux. I may use my windows laptop for designing but WINDOWS is so very very hard to used as controlling sofware, cost for one, countinuous updates and interrupts without warning and RUINING jobs (CNC, 3D Printers and Laser jobs).

There are ways around the many versions of Linux, maybe supporting one or use an OS image.

Perhaps Lightburn could provide a list that will let potential and current Linux users know which Linux versions are known to work with Lightburn and the camera.
I feel sure that the Linux users who have working installations could provide the information to Lightburn for them to compose a list of known Linux working installations.

[bernd.dk (Bernd)]

It’s remarkable that you got an official unsupported linux version working, with camera!
But you don’t mention which LightBurn version it is. I am using Linux Ubuntu with the latest development version Beta 1.7 - 15 and the camera is not functional yet.

Regarding LightBurn’s decision to drop Linux, there is a thread that exclusively deals with this topic.

Linux support to end after v1.7

After a great deal of internal discussion, we have made the difficult decision to sunset Linux support following the upcoming release of LightBurn 1.7.00. Linux users make up only 1% of our overall user base, but providing Linux-compatible builds takes up as much or more time as does providing them for Windows and Mac OS. We have a small, dedicated development team, and, over time, the burdens of supporting Linux have consumed an outsized portion of their time — time which will be better spent…

I personally am also very disappointed by this decision, but I understand LB’s arguments and especially the financial aspect of the case, so, no, I don’t feel betrayed, I’m just sad.

In my opinion, LB should have adhered to their own guidelines of only developing and supporting a single Linux Distro, it would perhaps have been able to relieve the developers and the forum quite a bit.

Practically I am waiting for the final version for Linux (1.7) with all current features, working added. This version will be my working version in the workshop. The other, the construction version, is a Mac version that I continue to update and continue to use in the office. This is how it has worked for me for the past several years and will continue to work for the next several years, I hope.

P.S. I have used for many years a one-time purchased version of Mach3 (without updates) and used it until I stopped using my milling machine. The same applies to Adobe Lightroom, I bought a version many years ago and then they started with their online and subscription politics…, I still use my paid Lightroom ver.5 (without updates), with full satisfaction.

[ngh (Gracie)]

We started with a fresh download of Lightburn so it is the Latest verson as at 29 August 2024. I believe 1.6.03.

We also used Mach3 for a small CNC SO CONFUSING. Got lucky with a legal version of Vectric VCarve Pro for a larger CNC we purchased second hand. Great program SUPER EXPENSIVE and only for windows. I can not afford the next update near $1000 especially when we hardly use the CNC since we got laser machines.

We have been Linux users for decades. Only two programs I need windows for the above CNC is one.