The solution was built using .run and 7z versions, predominately the 7z version in my testing. I’ve never tried AppImage in the emulated environment but may be worth exploring. I likely won’t be attempting it but may reconsider if there’s a particular interest in the solution.
Please an excuse a noob question. How do I “launch LightBurn with included script”?
Not sure how to do this part
Ok. So managed to get it to run. Then after trying to update. It now just opens for only a few seconds and closes again. Any ideas ?
Afraid there’s not much I can help with. If you look some of the more recent posts you can see that the latest versions of LightBurn with recent RPi OS updates coupled with Ubuntu updates where necessary simply wasn’t working. I haven’t investigated beyond that.
What did this entail? Are you saying it was working prior to that? If so, can you revert to previous state?
Basically I checked for updates once it was open. Sadly I had the same issue first time round too when I didn’t try any updates.
First run seems to go ok. Then doesn’t want to run again if I close it at all.
Any ideas why this could be.
That seems odd.
Try running it back to back where it works in the first run and fails in the second. Capture the complete terminal output into a text file and upload here please.
TLDR; It does work! 
Tested on 1.7.08 & 1.6.03, both work fine. See “the fix” below for a copy-paste solution.
No issues with subsequent runs or anything else.
Caveat: I couldn’t get online license activation working (including trial activation), but the support folks kindly and promptly assisted me with an Offline activation.
I’m running a Raspberry Pi 5, fully upgraded to the latest software as of yesterday.
- I’ll tell you the initial steps I took.
- I’ll describe below the errors I was encountering, using post #32 as a starting point.
- I’ll tell you what additional commands to run if you’re encountering the error I had.
Initial steps:
- Install Box64. I used Pi Apps to install it. Post #32 suggests installing it from source. That will probably work fine if you know what you’re doing, but Pi Apps is much easier and foolproof imo.
- Follow the remaining steps in post #32
- Run LightBurn using launch.sh
** actually, it runs fine for me running LightBurn directly … but maybe the additional env variables in launch.sh do something more that I can’t see?
Error!
In the terminal output, I got this error complaining about a missing library:
[BOX64] Error loading needed lib libcom_err.so.2
[BOX64] Using emulated /home/pi/LightBurn/lib/libkrb5support.so.0
[BOX64] Error loading one of needed lib
[BOX64] Error initializing needed lib libgssapi_krb5.so.2
[BOX64] Error loading one of needed lib
[BOX64] Error initializing needed lib libQt53DExtras.so.5
Additional commands (the fix):
This will download the additional library; extract it into a temporary directory; copy that file into LightBurn’s lib folder (should already exist); delete the temporary files.
cd ~/LightBurn # go to your LightBurn directory
wget http://security.debian.org/debian-security/pool/updates/main/e/e2fsprogs/libcom-err2_1.46.2-2+deb11u1_amd64.deb
mkdir -p tmp-deb && dpkg-deb -x libcom-err2_*_amd64.deb tmp-deb
cp tmp-deb/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcom_err.so.2.1 lib/
rm -rf tmp-deb
rm libcom-err2_*_amd64.deb
If you’re still encountering an error, I’ll add more information here.
I also installed a few apt packages during my attempt, but I don’t think they actually made a difference.
Please let me know if you try this. I’d like to make sure this works for others too.
Nice to see that this is potentially again in a workable state. Appreciate you taking the baton on this.
Personally, as much as this was proof of concept type of exercise, I’ve soured a bit on how practical this is given the fragility and the planned EOL of support for Linux in LightBurn.
If a fixed environment for the terminal version of LightBurn on Linux could be made to work then perhaps a container or static image of base OS and updates would be worth preserving.
Looks like you got the additional missing libraries from Debian whereas the libraries I sourced were from Ubuntu.
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Yeah the EOL support for a Linux build is pretty disappointing, but I’m really just stoked to get this working at all.
Even if you use a newer version of LightBurn on a windows machine, you can still save your file and load it up with a linux-compatible version and use that to actually send the files.
I’ve been stuck with TopWisdom AutoLaser software for a while, only because it supports communication over IP, and that’s something I can set up without needing to have a whole windows computer next to my laser cutter (just an ethernet port, which I have).
Yesterday I learned that I can set up USB over IP in Linux very easily (wasn’t an option when I looked into it a few years ago), so now I have my main Pi 5 safely at home where I use it for other things, and an older Pi 3B attached to my laser cutter outside passing communication between the laser and the Pi 5 inside the warmth of my home.
I’m so happy with how well it’s all working right now! I get to use LightBurn again. Yay!!!
I hope you’re looking at using USBIP rather than virtualhere given the open vs proprietary setups.
Thanks again for the update. There are certainly others here using this solution as yet.
Yes, USBIP. When I looked a few years ago, only virtualhere was an option and I wasn’t willing to pay for that.
USBIP works like a dream (as long as it’s 2 linux devices talking to each other. I tried Windows to Linux and the windows machine couldn’t detect my laser even though the USB device did show up)
I have found that emulating through two layers of abstraction, (box 64, and wine) the results are much better. Not sure why but the performance is better and the engraving has less bugs.
Can you elaborate on how this works? What are you doing in Wine vs Box64? I assume you’re running Windows version of LightBurn on Pi but please confirm.
when running lightburn in wine in box64, the graphical bugs that create artifacts, and the inabilaty to sighn in disapear, i think this is due to the fact that wine uses much better drivers, and that box64 and wine are made to work better