Linux support to end after v1.7

LightBurn Software Questions OS Specific
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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 delivering the consistent updates, powerful new features, and overall standard of excellence that our user base expects from us.

We understand that our Linux users will be disappointed by this decision. We appreciate all of our users, and assure you that your existing license will still work with any version of LightBurn for which your license term is valid, up until LightBurn version 1.7.00, forever. Prior releases will always be made available for download. Finally, your license will continue to be valid for future Windows and Mac OS releases covered by your license term.

If you are a Linux-only user who has recently purchased a license or renewal that is valid for a release of LightBurn after 1.7.00, please contact us at support@lightburnsoftware.com if you’d like us to refund and rescind your license or renewal.

Rest assured that we will be using the time gained by sunsetting Linux support to redouble our efforts at making better software for laser cutters, and beyond.

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This makes me sad. Does this mean that whatever bugs are found in 1.7.00 will never be fixed? Maybe put it into a support mode where only bugfixes are back ported?

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At the very least 1.7 will get bugfix releases up until v1.8 is released, so we may still be able to pull some fixes into 1.7 for Linux only even after v1.8 is released. This entirely depends on what the bug is and what the fix for it is so I cannot make any specific guarantees.

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At least anecdotally, they also constitute a very high proportion of the forum members helping folks with gnarly tech problems.

It’s been a fun ride …

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That’s what I feared since LightBurn has “grown up”. The freed recursers probably go to MillMage, they are where the money lies.
That’s the end of our old computers in the workshops, none of them can be used anymore with newer versions of LightBurn in the future, I think it’s very sad.

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We all do here too, honestly. As Adam mentioned, this is something we’ve been discussing for a long time - well over a year at this point - but a few things have changed that kind of forced our hand in a few ways.

  1. We build more installers for Linux than any other platform, and that appears to be getting worse, not better, because it feels like every new Linux user wants us to support their favored distro, and has opinions on how it should be packaged / delivered.

  2. We’re at the point where a number of the supported MacOS and Windows OS versions we currently support are being phased out by the framework we use, and moving to a later version is going to require us to take over supporting some of the stuff that system provided in the past, the biggest being camera access. This means writing custom libraries for every platform. The one for Linux will likely take as much time as the ones for Mac and Windows, but will have significantly less impact on the user base.

  3. We spend a disproportionate amount of time on Linux support, relative to the other two platforms. It’s 1% of our user base, but a much larger portion of the support load.

The devs are already pulled in lots of different directions and we have to pick what we tackle based on what impacts the largest numbers of our users, and sadly that isn’t Linux support. None of us like it, but we need to do this.

I absolutely agree, and that’s a big part of the reason it took as long as it did for us to get here. I know quite a few people who are very active here are Linux users, and we knew you’d be disappointed.

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I will start testing the Windows version under Wine/Proton.

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Sorry, I don’t quite understand that. I have changed 3 different distros to finally be able to use the distro recommended and supported by LightBurn. I have respected and defended this decision to other LightBurn/Linux users because I thought it was fair of LightBurn to support at least one Linux version.

Drop all the other Linux distros and just keep one, the one that is easiest for you to maintain, please.

It is possible, but it is probably the most active and loyal percentage you have ever had.

I’m just disappointed and feel left out, but also realize that times have changed, even for LightBurn.

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You have, but a lot of Linux users will see “We support xxxx” and they’ll go off and try a different distro. It’ll mostly work, but then something doesn’t, and it takes a while for us to figure out why, and then we get a lot of arguments over why their chosen distro should work, and why we should be supporting it.

When we pulled the activation data to see how many active Linux users there were, the activations spanned over 200 different distros / flavors.

We’re not happy about it either, and I wish things were different.

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Will these freed up resources be able to work on a native arm version of the app? After Linux support ceases, Lightburn will only run natively on x86 Windows and pretty old Mac hardware which I bet Apple plans to cease supporting sooner than later.

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This is 100% one of the things we’ll be using the resources for. Windows and Mac native ARM builds are absolutely on our roadmap.

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Have you considered using an AppImage distribution instead of a native installer? This is horrible news. We have maintained two licenses since we bought our machine. I would pay double the price to avoid having to run Windows. I don’t see why the idea of only supporting, say generic Ubuntu, can’t be reconsidered.

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If you are truly unhappy, you should consider a different path forward than completely discontinuing Linux support. There has to be something better you can do than abandon us.

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We’ve provided an AppImage installer for nearly a year.

As it is, we technically only support generic Ubuntu 22.04. Everything else is a your mileage may vary situation. But for the reasons that @LightBurn and myself noted above it doesn’t make sense for us to continue. Regardless of how many distros we support or which distro we support it becomes a whole new set of hurdles for every release or new feature. There are a lot of large changes coming in the near future to the codebase which make it extremely hard to justify.

I don’t want to drop it either. We’ve been fighting against the need to do so for a very long time.

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Small clarification - might have miss read what you mean - LightBurn runs fine on Apple Silicon M1 M2 M3 etc.

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As a Linux user, I’ve always been proud to say that we have the best OS, just because of initiatives like this.
It is with great sadness that I read this news today.
I want to leave here a suggestion that can help Linux users and continue to be proud of LightBurn: Create installation scripts for LightBurn on PlayonLinux, wine, bottles, etc…
This way we will all remain faithful.

Thank you for your attention

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This is disappointing news. Been with Lightburn from the very beginning. This whole household runs on Linux including my CNC router. :frowning:

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Correct, but it’s not native and runs through emulation via Rosetta2 and Lightburn is the only app on my Mac that is still Intel only. I doubt Apple will continue supporting Rosetta2 indefinitely thus it’ll be nice to get a native arm version of Lightburn.

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So Sad. I am in the process of switching everything to LM at this time. Guess I will have to keep a Win10 machine around until it dies.

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As a laser user and a CNC user I came to LightBurn from K40 Whisperer and a friend who’d met Jason at one of the Maker Faires told me about LightBurn and I was impressed enough to upgrade the laser hardware so it would LightBurn on Linux. I’ve not looked back since. It’s been great to see LightBurn grow as an app and company and more recently I’ve been hopeful for MillMage for Linux to grow, like LightBurn, into a great tool.

I’m sad to be losing both LightBurn for Linux and MillMage for Linux.

I know Windows has gotten a bit better in the past 20 years but it’s still not as reliable as Linux nor as versatile. No doubt Linux graphics devs are no where near as plentiful as Windows devs and pushing Qt requires deeper system knowledge across all platforms. At least we weren’t told they’d be porting to C#.
To the other Linux users out there, if you don’t find Linux support here in the future, check out the makerforums.info site. At the very least we’ll have docker options to run the last supported Linux runtime of LightBurn 1.7.x on any Linux into the future.

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