Finally!
Long story - I used to run LightBurn on a tiny Windows tablet, because it was spare, and I was just testing. I have an Emblaser 2, which has a built-in camera to show the cutting bed. The camera worked fine in Windows, but the tablet was too awkward to use, plus it would never offer a Samba share reliably to my other PC where I do my CAD, so moving files was a pain. This temporary solution was in place for a long time, which I’m sure many people can relate to.
One day I found an All-in-one PC by the side of the road (don’t judge me) and installed Linux on it. Samba shares worked great! Unfortunately the camera didn’t work in LightBurn. I see this is a common issue, with no fixes offered. The PC also started crashing a lot, which I first thought was due to the Linux version of LightBurn, then due to the failure of LightBurn to support the camera. Then due to I-don’t-know-what. I put several versions of Linux on it, but it crashed before I put LightBurn on, so it’s not LightBurn.
Today I got another cast-off PC running Linux Mint (Cinnamon). I had heard that Mint is a nice distro, but never used it. It actually is.
Samba shares work, and I installed LightBurn without any problems. Still no camera. The camera works in vlc, so I know the hardware works, but I got a black screen in LightBurn (which is more than I got previously!).
I started LightBurn from the command line, so that I could catch any errors to do with the camera. I did this with the previous Linux, and the general consensus is to install the good, bad, and ugly gstreamer plugins, but this didn’t fix the problem.
On Mint those plugins are already present. I dug a little further and found this:
tl;dr sudo apt purge gstreamer1.0-vaapi
Camera image appears in LightBurn!
I’m running LightBurn 1.7.07 with an Emblaser 2 on Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon (v5.8.4), kernel version 5.15.0-136-generic. I’ve only just got this PC set up, so I haven’t really exercised it yet. I hope it will be Just Fine.
It just shows that you are a smart person who can’t say no to a bag of electronics from a friend or an old but usable computer from the electronic graveyard.
I have two very old second-hand PCs as work (laser) computers in my workshop that run on Linux. But I have never been able to get Mint to run with my camera from LightBurn. However, under Ubuntu it has worked perfectly for many years - here with me.
The group that is (was) here in the forum, who played with Linux and helped each other, is unfortunately dying out, because LB v1.7.xx is the last Linux version supported by LB.
Because it works so smoothly with my Linux computer and my laser, I will use Linux 1.7 until the lbrn2 files can no longer be used from the newer versions, v2…v3…
The time after that - I have 2 MacBookPro 15", built in 2014 and of course recycled :-), here I managed to “cheat” Apple and install the latest top-of-the-line MacOS Sequoia 15.3.2 . This system also runs very stable and smooth, also with camera, under LightBurn. …so with a little recycling luck we are good to go in the future
Well, I had hoped for more interest, as it seems to have been a contentious and frustrating issue.
I’m not worried about LightBurn’s continued support of Linux. The current version works, and I’m only using it to drive the laser. I do all my CAD in other software, and just load DXF into LightBurn, assign cuts, and send to the laser. I don’t design anything in LightBurn itself as that would mean I am locked in to LightBurn (and anyone else I give I LightBurn file to would have to have LightBurn too).
It also means that I don’t have to “upgrade” to Windows 11 or anything like that.
The problem is not that big or not big enough because, as I said, there are supported distros that support a camera in LB just fine.
People are different, I only design/construct in LB and since LightBurn is the de facto standard for laser cutting and engraving, I have no problems exchanging files with others. In addition, there is also the option to export lbrn2 to other formats. (.ai, .dxf, .svg, .rd)
Fortunately, I am not tied to Windows, so I do not have that problem at all.
