Linux support to end after v1.7

LightBurn Software Questions OS Specific
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I’m getting in the line to repeat this is sad news. I’ve been a Windows version user, but the fact that I have have only 12 months after my setup is not supported anymore (Windows 10 support ends) made me pull the trigger now and switch to Linux.

I’m running PopOS at the moment, but having LightBurn support would be enough motivation for me to switch to one distro e.g. Ubuntu if that would make the Linux version feasible for LightBurn dev team.

It breaks my heart to retire a great PC that ticks all the boxes except MSFT artificial CPU version (I’m having 1st Core-i7 generation that is not supported) understanding a similar machine (1l case w/ nVidia GPU that is powerful enough + fits perfectly into my shop) would be $$$$.

Please try to find a way to keep the linux version alive. I think there might be much more people switching when EoL for Windows 10 is happening.

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Gracias por tu respuesta.
No se realmente cual es el inconveniente o por qué es tan difícil que si funcione en esta plataforma.
Pensé que era más fácil, pero como dije no soy programador.

Para muchos usar Linux es mejor por muchas razones, mis computadores son antiguas, pero son buenas y de buenos rendimientos. Lástima que ya Windows 11 no es compatible con ellas y económicamente no las puedo reemplazar así no más.
Lo que me deja triste, porque la licencia que tengo con ustedes esta a punto de perder la posibilidad de ser reinstalada en otro computador.

¿Hay forma que nos ayuden con eso por lo menos a los usuarios de Linux?

Thanks for your reply.
I don’t really know what the problem is or why it is so difficult to get it to work on this platform.
I thought it was easier, but as I said I am not a programmer.

For many, using Linux is better for many reasons, my computers are old, but they are good and perform well. It’s a shame that Windows 11 is no longer compatible with them and I cannot economically replace them just like that.
Which makes me sad, because the license I have with you is about to lose the possibility of being reinstalled on another computer.

Is there a way you can help us with that at least for Linux users?

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Licenses of LightBurn are easily moved from one computer to another. Send an email to support@lightburnsoftware.com and we can help you with this.

Make sure you have your license key number before you start this.

Click Help > License Management on your current computer, then click ‘Deactivate’ to remove the license from that PC.

Then just enter your license key on the new computer in LightBurn when prompted, and click the Activate button.

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Umm… Nobody runs ARM Windows. 99% of ARM/AARCH64 devices out there are Linux based. (well, ok. A large percentage are Mac now that M1 is a thing)

I gotta ask though… building software on multiple architectures isn’t generally a big deal. Why do you need to completely gut Linux support to do it?

Running on POSIX platforms should make you more cross-architecture friendly, not less. That’s one of the foundational reasons POSIX exists as a standard… Platform and architecture portability.

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We’ve said this numerous times in this thread:

  • We’re getting to a point where we have to write our own custom code to handle some things that the framework we use (Qt) isn’t good at. Right now it’s camera support (still cameras, not streaming). Writing any OS specific code for Linux means spending 1/3rd the dev time (possibly more) for 1/100th of our users.

  • Different packaging methods are not going to solve library dependency conflicts. We use a bunch of different libraries: Potrace, OpenCV, Qt, our license provider, LibUSB, and several more. Many of these libraries want specific versions of their dependencies. We could potentially solve this with some creative use of the PatchELF tool, but it would require finding all of these issues, shipping with multiple versions of said libraries, and hoping that we haven’t missed anything. This is, again, a lot of dev time to spend for such a small number of our users.

You are correct - it wasn’t a big deal, which is why Linux was made available in the first place, but we weren’t pushing up against the limits of the libraries we use like we are now.

Our collective decision was to stop supporting Linux because it costs us too much time relative to the number of customers actively using it and supporting it.

Your license, for example, expired almost a year ago, and is presumably is still working fine for you, and that’s not going to change - we’re not shutting it off, we just aren’t going to be updating it after the 1.7.xx releases.

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I feel every one is being way to easy on you guys and not really calling it out but no matter how you wrap up the cost of supporting Linux it is an absolute mistake to remove it. There are now at least some of that 1% that are now working on being direct competition and it won’t just take the Linux users but also eat from all others. If I where to guess why lightburn even started was because rdworks and ez cad sucked and what stopped someone else doing the same thing that you did is you got to market first. Now you have painted a target on your back and are now going to be chasing and scrambling to keep up. As a user of RD and EZ lightburn wasn’t perfect but was just a bit better and consolidated workflow over multiple machines. Now I absolutely look forward to the competition there are so many little issues that were not enough of a problem to invest the effort into but now… I wasn’t even on the forum until or even used support till this issue came up as LB did what I needed I have never had a issue that wasn’t solved from a little bit of reading or a video but now LB doesn’t check all my boxes and makes it tempting to start know that there is a possibility to get part of a 34 million dollar pie

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I am sad to see that LB and its linux journey is coming to a end but as a programmer and developer that has been working in Linux since the beginning when Slackware 1st introduced a packaged system as well as cutting my teeth in BSD I can truly relate to the pain any software developer has with maintaining any serious graphical based software across the always increasing amount of Linux Distro’s.

At any given time I probably have a couple of dozen machines running in my server farm and I always maintain at least one minimal Windows based machine just for the reason like what is going to happen to LB.

I have spent a rather large part of my life working in a Linux environment and watched over the years as every year someone new comes along and creates a new distribution by tearing bits and pieces from existing sources trying to create a new distribution which just adds to the issues trying to make any software that is largely graphical a huge mess. Normally i do tons of kernel work and even with it being at the center of a Linux Distro its got thousands of supporters just to keep the flow between Linus and his small group keep what they do working on all the various distro’s…

As I said like so many others I am sad to see this transpire but to be honest I truly do feel your pain and I honestly believe based on the responses I see in this thread that you guys have put a lot of thought into trying not to go down this road and I think the rest of the die hard linux users like me need to move on and be thankful for LB’s creation and make use of what we got. Linux over the years has truly grown as it has attracted more users looking to loose the MS experience but I sometimes don’t think a lot of them really understand just what all is involved in trying to create/maintain graphics based software on a Linux/Unix platform.

Best wishes and I truly hope I have not offended anyone with my post but I don’t like beating around the bush…

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Thank you, adammhaile. I’m sure everyone will be really grateful to you.

I would like to add that there are always possible and equally profitable alternatives. The Blender Foundation (2002) is an independent public benefit organization that provides a complete, free, and open-source software. The foundation’s offices are hosted by the company, which employs 24 people working on Blender software and other projects. While the donation volumes may not be as significant as theirs, it can certainly pay a tempting salary for some programmers. Many projects are maintained by donations and work very well; another example is Drupal. For this to work, it only takes one person to raise the flag in favor of Linux, and time will take care of the rest.

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Hi Adam,
After Linux sunsets and we can continue to use our last installed version will we be able to move the license to a new (single) machine.
I noticed a few people talking about then running offline ???
And as Douglas Adams said “so long, and thanks for all the fish”

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Sure. It already works like that. You can use your expired key to activate any LB instance that was valid for that key. So if you have a key for version 1.3 you can still download the old version, install it on a new PC and activate it. Forever. (Of course, you need to consider the activation limit and might need to deactivate the old instance etc.)

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Something that would be really helpful is that in the cryptix licensing software, could you please let us know the last version of the software usuable by a key. I have 2 keys, DSP and gcode. The gcode I have abandoned when I got a ruida controller and needed DSP. I have no idea what version I ended that one at and could use the license seat from it on my design computer in my house.

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Hi Colten,
That’s a good idea. I will forward this to discuss how we could implement showing the available version for a given license key.

If you send us both your keys via support@lightburnsoftware.com we can make you an offer merging the two keys into one, giving you an additional year of updates

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I’ll say goodbye to lightburn. and the money we wasted.

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waste of money I certainly will not and cannot call the end of LightBurn for Linux. It’s a bit like a marriage that ends, the good memories from many years together and joint children keep you forever. You will probably never find the great love again but another partner (OS) with whom life continues in one way or another. :wink:

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Another analogy is that bitter memories of divorce can be forgotten when you meet someone that opens your eyes to a better life :slight_smile:

Not really a LB analogy, but software that is relevant can be fleeting. I remember Wordperfect, dBase, Lotus 1-2-3.

Lightburn is a niche software, so it is somewhat insulated from a bigger company going after it - IMHO

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Easy to understand but difficult to accept ! I’m on opensuse because one year ago i decide to freed myself from Microsoft !
But some software i use are only available for Windows. That’s why i use a virtual Windows 10 machine powered natively with XEN (or KVM) on openSUSE for them. It works very well and it’s time now for me to move lightburn on it.
But it will need one more activation ! Can you please increase the number of time that the key could be reset ? Thank’s

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I too am a Linux user who will be sad to see Lightburn go from my platform of choice. I have been a Windows user/developer (work), have done the Mac thing, but went back to Linux after a coffee ended my last Mac Book Pro… don’t miss it… except for some pieces of software that just don’t make it to Linux…

Looking at various sources, Linux seems to make up around 4-5% of the desktop market, not that much, but still significant, and at least slowly increasing. Mac OS about 15%, so not hugely more… I know it was mentioned that this does not equate to Lightburn percentages, but still interesting looking towards the future.

Linux will continue having a hard time on the desktop if applications simply are not available for it… so when they are, I am happy, when they go, that is sad/disappointing…

Could you not have a matrix like:

Feature         Windows  Mac OS  Linux
-------------------------------------------
Feature A       Yes      Yes     Yes
Feature B       Yes      Yes     Yes
...
Camera Support  Yes      Yes     No
X Feature       Yes      Yes     No
Y Feature       Yes      Yes     Partial
Supported       Yes      Yes     Version <= 2.7 Yes
                                 >2.7 Community Support Only

This means if you want the extra features or support, you must go for the Windows or Mac version.

Would this not solve most of the problems? Yes, there will still be work involved in conditionally including/excluding features and keeping at least one Linux platform building, but hopefully the smaller numbers of Linux users would still make this cost effective?

It also has the advantage of keeping the code base compatible (somewhat, minus the features that are too difficult) with Linux should the unexpected happen, and Linux takes off, or a competitor comes in with a Linux version and then offers a Windows/Mac version too.

Will finish off by saying I appreciate the support Lightburn has had for Linux in the past, and the fact that we can continue to use the last supported version indefinitely, I can understand the predicament you now face… hopefully there will be a way forward that will continue with Linux support… fingers crossed… otherwise I guess it will be 2.7 for a while.

Thanks for the journey so far!

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Email support@lightburnsoftware.com and we’ll happily do this for you.

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Unfortunately no, because maintaining the codebase with those features stubbed out takes work, we’d still have to maintain the cloud runners and our various scripts to build and package it.

In all honesty part of the problem is that people don’t read (or potentially don’t understand). We’ve said for years that we only support a couple specific Linux distros, and that has never once stopped people from trying it on literally hundreds of others, and complaining or requesting support when it fails.

Partial feature support would fall into this same trap - Users would see “LightBurn for Linux” and then wonder why their specific laser or a particular feature wouldn’t work.

We’ve internally discussed dozens of different options, including this one, and always come to the same conclusion unfortunately.

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Did you consider calling it “LightBurn for Ubuntu 22.04” and telling your support people to tell customers you only support ex. Ubuntu 22.04 and recommend they ask the community for support when NOT using Ubuntu 22.04? What does your support people tell users who ask why something doesn’t run on Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows 7, or Windows 8?

I do get that by dropping LightBurn for Linux(all distros) it also means no need to repeat the whole Linux build and support processes for the MillMage which would immediately double efforts on all platforms. It’s only been in alpha release so nobody will complain MillMage for Linux is going away.

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