I am working on making LightBurn working on Linux for my neighbour who has some kind of laser cutter and uses it with LightBurn. (I am not familar with the cutter itself)
He does not want to use Windows 11 anymore and therefore the effort to try Linux with wine.
Now I made the licensing work in wine (I think/hope/guess) by installing wmi through winetricks and then enabling the wmi service at wineboot.
I use a trial licence currently (I might try the license of my neighbour later).
Nonetheless I had an issue shown on start of LightBurn that stopped execution because of a missing licensing system (wmi)
This error is gone after installing and enabling wmi in wine.
The debug log states
[...]
12:35:56.951 D: License system started
12:35:56.952 D: No 2nd instance detected
12:35:56.952 D: Mutex created
12:35:56.977 D: Timer functions linked
[...]
I would like to discuss this in the public, rather than a support request, since this way we (the community) could help to keep LightBurn running on linux ourselves.
As long as this states that the licensing is working, I would like to ask for help with the following crash log:
Crash log
Crash Log Stack Trace for LightBurn v2.0.05:
<couldn't map PC to fn name>
Undo Stack:
Redo Stack:
Debug log
12:35:56.868 D: "" "Fri Feb 6 2026"
12:35:56.951 D: License system started
12:35:56.952 D: No 2nd instance detected
12:35:56.952 D: Mutex created
12:35:56.977 W: QCoreApplication::postEvent: Unexpected null receiver
12:35:56.977 D: Timer functions linked
12:35:57.010 D: Splash image created
12:35:57.016 D: Events processed
12:35:57.016 D: no old user association found
12:35:57.016 D: no old user association found
12:35:57.016 D: RegSet( 'Software\Classes\.lbrn', 'LightBurn.LightBurn.1' ): already correct
12:35:57.016 D: RegSet( 'Software\Classes\.lbrn2', 'LightBurn.LightBurn.1' ): already correct
12:35:57.017 D: RegSet( 'Software\Classes\.lbrn\Content Type', 'text/plain' ): already correct
12:35:57.017 D: RegSet( 'Software\Classes\.lbrn\PerceivedType', 'text' ): already correct
12:35:57.017 D: RegSet( 'Software\Classes\.lbrn2\Content Type', 'text/plain' ): already correct
12:35:57.017 D: RegSet( 'Software\Classes\.lbrn2\PerceivedType', 'text' ): already correct
12:35:57.017 D: RegSet( 'Software\Classes\.lbrn\OpenWithProgIds\LightBurn.LightBurn.1', '' ): already correct
12:35:57.017 D: RegSet( 'Software\Classes\.lbrn2\OpenWithProgIds\LightBurn.LightBurn.1', '' ): already correct
12:35:57.017 D: RegSet( 'Software\Classes\LightBurn.LightBurn.1', 'LightBurn' ): already correct
12:35:57.017 D: RegSet( 'Software\Classes\LightBurn.LightBurn.1\Shell\Open\Command', 'Z:\home\my-hidden-username\Lightburn\LightBurn.exe "%1"' ): already correct
12:35:57.080 D:
12:35:57.080 D: File associations set
12:35:57.080 D: Using the core prefs dir
12:35:58.115 D: --------------- Icon Engine Plugin Version: 0.5.3.0
12:35:58.348 D: UI initialized
12:35:58.358 D: Language menu initialized
12:35:58.763 D: Window setup complete
12:35:58.777 D: EV: 1018 took 9 uS
12:35:58.778 D: Cut list initialized
12:35:58.891 W: Failed to initialize audio engine stream -2004287456
12:35:58.892 D: Recent projects initialized
12:35:58.905 D: Created Tool: Selection
12:35:58.910 W: No preferences file found
12:35:58.911 D: Align output unchecked
12:35:58.912 D: EV: 1001 took 6 uS
12:35:59.080 D: Power notifications registered
12:35:59.080 D: Post Prefs Setup
12:35:59.088 D: SHX fonts loaded
12:36:03.239 D: destructing: Core Machine Control
12:36:03.248 W: Failed to stop audio engine -2004287487
That is only true if one doesn’t want updates of LightBurn anymore (since the Linux version is no longer maintained).
My neighbour is interested in (paid) updates, but cannot use them, because they currently seem to not work with wine.
Now, if the licencing issue is really gone, then looking into up to date Windows releases of LightBurn makes sense for having both, updates and no Widows installation.
i remember getting to this point too; the fundemental issue is the specifiic WMI calls required by the licensing library arent actually implemented the wine wmi implementation. iirc, there are/were pretty good reasons too; it’s been a while since i went down the specific rabbit hole.
the functions related to system profiling require some pretty low level (windows) kernel access, which will never occur in wine, as it’s fundementally not the architecture of wine. whilst you see the log message regarding the license system starting, it is likely crashing on an unexpected or null response from the wine wmi stub implementation when it actually makes a wmi call. like a good chunk of all wmi calls respond with ERROR_CALL_NOT_IMPLEMENTED.
short of Lightburn switching licensing libraries, I cant see a viable path to getting around this issue, without breaking a whole pile of terms of the license agreement.
This is correct
We do not support Windows installations on Wine.
Correct, which, if we were to implement, would mostly mean it would be easier to just continue to support Linux, and all the issues that drove the team to make the hard decision to stop the support.
I’ve been a Windows guy since '95, but Windows 11 is making it harder to stay. Between the bloat and the fact that it’s turning perfectly good PCs into e-waste, I’m moving my daily driver to Linux. Modern distros like Mint are so user-friendly now that you almost forget you aren’t on Windows—until you go to open LightBurn. I really hope the team reconsiders Linux support; there’s a massive wave of users making this exact switch right now.
We’re in violent agreement; we’ve been running various Linux distros on the PCs around here for a couple of decades. Manjaro’s rolling release distro hits the sweet spot for us.
However, a few irreplaceable programs require Windows, so we have a Token Windows Laptop and, now, a mini-PC for the laser. Those machines run Windows with its invasive mis-features turned off (as much as possible) and we use them for nothing else beyond those programs. I regard them as dedicated control hardware rather than general-pupose PCs.
RDP works surprisingly well through Remmina and confining Windows 11 to an XFCE window makes the program look like Linux.
It would probably be best to run Windows 7 inside of a virtual machine on a Linux based computer.
In that configuration you would have full control over networking to isolate it from MS Updates, port scanning or other network attacks along with disabling virus scanning so you’d gain lots of performance.
Windows 11 is a massive resource hog for what’s needed for LightBurn, Windows 10 is only a little better but might still require the ability to phone home to MS. Windows 7 would also be the cheapest to find and install in a VM.
LightBurn version 1.7 is the last version compatible with Linux, versions of Windows prior to 10, and versions of macOS prior to 11.
Because I’m running Windows specifically to run the current version of LightBurn, a mini-PC eliminates a whole pile of jank I do not want to deal with.
Sorry Ed, I replied to the thread, not your comment so it really wasn’t directed at you.
As for virtual machine software being “jank” it’d understandable some people like hardware over software but rest assured, virtual machine software is NOT janky and Windows would have died long ago had it not been for virtual machines allowing one Windows VM to crash and burn while leaving the other virtual machines running until they crashed. To each his/her own.
Yup, but even a VM can be problematic with the licensing. Haven’t tested it of late. I use a Lenovo m700 usff, which can be had on eBay for <$50. Given what I charge per hour for dealing with low level Linux stuff, it’s a no brainer!
We’ve heard this repeatedly, year over year, with pretty much every release of Windows, but I believe we have fundamental differences of opinion on what the word “massive” means in terms of actual user numbers.
The “please bring back Linux” post on our feature voting site, for example, had 31 votes when I looked last. There were also a variety of other “please support Linux” posts that had suggestions related to packaging, reduced feature set, or were just duplicates.
The request site tracks the unique users who vote on a topic, so if we merge two requests, voted on by different people, the counts are properly updated. I merged about 10 different “support Linux” posts into the original one, and the vote count was still 31 - meaning it was the same people, just posting multiple times.
They’re a very vocal bunch, but unfortunately the numbers aren’t there, and until/unless that changes, it doesn’t make sense for us to devote significant resources to supporting a platform used by so few people.
The lack of Linux support creates a classic chicken-and-egg paradox. We often hear that there aren’t enough Linux users to justify a native build, but users can’t migrate to Linux as long as their primary production tools remain Windows-exclusive.
While the overhead of maintaining a Linux branch is understandable, the current lack of support effectively forces the user base to remain in the Windows ecosystem. Hopefully, as cross-platform packaging (like Flatpaks) matures and Linux adoption grows, we’ll see a shift that allows users to choose their OS based on preference rather than software necessity.
