this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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As a advid user of lightburn for my business, this truely saddens me.

I loved being able to have the freedom to run linux and have 1st class support.

Lightburn states in this post, about how linux is less than 1℅ of there users. They also state it costs lots of money and time to develop for each distribution. To which i gotta ask WHY not just make a flatpak or distribute source to let the community package it. Like its kinda dumb to kill it off ive been using zoronOS for 3 years running my laser cutter! And it works bloody great!!!! The last version for linux will be 1.7 which will continue to work forever with a valid liscence. I do not plan to switch back to ~~windows~~ spyware or ~~MAC~~ overpriced Unix. I hope the people at lightburn reconsider in the future, There software is the best software for laser cutters period. And when buying my laser cutter (60watt omtech) i went out of my way to buy one with a rudia controller as it is compatible with lightburn.

--edit just got the email this is what they sent

"To our valued Linux users:

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.

Many of us at LightBurn are Linux users ourselves, and this decision was made reluctantly, after careful investigation of all possible avenues for continuing Linux support.

The unfortunate reality is that Linux users make up only 1% of our overall user base, but providing and supporting Linux-compatible builds takes up as much or more time as does providing them for Windows and Mac OS.

The segmentation of Linux distributions complicates these burdens further — we've had to provide three separate packages for the versions of Linux we officially support, and still encounter frequent compatibility issues on those distributions (or closely related distributions), to say nothing of the many distributions we have been asked to support.

Finally, we will soon begin building LightBurn on a new framework that will require our development team to write custom libraries for each platform we support. This will be a significant undertaking and, regrettably, it is simply not tenable to invest our team's time into an effort that will impact such a small portion of our user base. Such challenges will only continue to arise as we work to expand LightBurn's capabilities going forward.

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 v1.7.00, please contact us for a refund.

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. We hope you will continue to utilize LightBurn on a supported operating system going forward, and we thank you for being a part of the LightBurn community.

Sincerely,

The LightBurn Software Team

Copyright © 2024 LightBurn Software. All rights reserved. "

I appreciate that there willing to refund recently bought liscences and all versions up to 1.7 forever instead of DRM bullshit (you gotta buy the newest subscription service) {insert cable guys from southpark} But if your rewriting the framework then why kill off linux??? They said there working on a native arm build for MacOS which knowing apple your gonna half to buy the new macbook cause the old one is old and apple needs your money. So its not anymore of a reason to kill linux

TLDR: there killing linux support because its less than 1% of there userbase and they spend more money and time maintaining the lightburn build.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Bummer. Also:

There = over there, that place, rather than here. Also, “There will be time. There are no peaches now. There, there… don’t worry.”
Their = in the possession of them, belonging to them.
They’re = they are.

“They’re going to take their business to the store over there; across the street. There will be no other choice.”

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Is it time to write a new open source software?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Meerk40t has been coming along quite nicely. I've been using it for about 6 months to run both my grbl and fiber lasers.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

I'm kinda surprised one doesn't already exist tbh

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago (1 children)

With proprietary software, there's always a chance they'll pull the rug out from under you.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

...as opposed to open source software, which will be maintained and updated forever, and there will always be people to work on it for free. /s

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

See, here's the thing about open source, you have the source. You can always compile a discontinued program. You can even update the code if you want. No one can say "You can't run it anymore". I can grab Linux Kernel 0.01 and still compile it. No one will stop me. No one!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

That's only true in theory, and if you are actually capable of doing that.

The reality is that most software was already barely working when it was written, it's poorly documented and if you try to work on it without any help you might as well write it on your own from scratch.

You will also encounter incompatibilities, missing dependencies, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I love FOSS, I know all the advantages and it's definitely better than the alternative. But it's also not a silver bullet. Though this case is pretty cut and dry.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Honestly they should just make it work in wine.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

LightBurn should hire better developers then

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

But how can they give raises to their execs then?! Think of the poor C-Suite!

[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Tell me you are too oblivious to implement CI/CD without telling me you're too oblivious to to implement CI/CD. Their builds and packaging should have been fully automated if it was such a pain. If you can make a Mac version of any software, you can make a Linux version. The debate internally was likely management being dumb as rocks and overruling anyone who actually knows anything.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't think they're worried about packaging so much as the fact that what works on one distro might be mysteriously incompatible on another

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean the apis are totally different on MacOS, like MacOS is not Linux by any means

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Sure, but the CI/CD pipeline would take care of that for you for every single build. You build the pipeline once and then forget about it until Apple makes some breaking change. Meanwhile, you push the code to your repository one time and watch as the machine automatically builds all 50 installers for you in one go AND publishes them for you without having to lift a finger.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

As someone who's written pipelines who do exactly that on Windows, macOS, Linux across x86_64, aarch64, and MIPS, with optimized, unoptimized, instrumented for ASAN, instrumented for TSAN, and instrumented for coverage, and does it all in a distributed containerized workflow... It's not as easy as it sounds. Honestly macOS is way more of a hassle to deal with than Linux.

Unless you need ROS. ROS is utter garbage. ROS is popular in robots. ROS is, unlike its name, not actually an operating system but rather a system of tools and utilities which do not follow any standards and certainly not the OS standards. I literally hate ROS. I would burn that shit to the ground and rebuild-the-world if I had the time to.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago

Yeah they never were great at Linux support anyway. About 6 years ago I had to teach them that LTS distros like Ubuntu stay on old versions of packages. At the time they built their Linux-x64.deb against Ubuntu 18.04 when Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.0x and thus everything from Mint 17 and on were still under LTS and so a lot of installs out there would see a dependency error.

This is definitely where Flatpak or even Appimage is the real solution.

Well it seems to be time to make a FOSS laser engraver app. Never did really like LaserWeb.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It sounds like they're going to rewrite a bunch of code and decided to not invest the capital into Linux.

That's a strange problem to have these days since libraries like this are often designed to run on all platforms, but what do I know.

But if it's true that fewer than 1% of users are on Linux and it's costing them more than other platforms, it makes no financial sense to keep it going.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I'm no business man (far from that), but 1% sounds like more than 0. (Technically, 1% also tells us nothing about how much money that is.)

Also, "1% of users" is one way of looking at it, but if it's killing 1 of 3 major platforms does not seem like a good default strategic move. Things can change (and are changing) so next time MS does something to f* with their users, I think it can be a good move to be on the user's side, not a major OS's side. (And I don't know anything about laser-cutting communities, but I would guess it has more than average share of creative and tech-savvy people who also like (or need) to have good control of their tech -- I mean, this ain't no spreadsheet app.)

Again, I have no idea what it takes to make laser-cutting SW work, but simple short-sighted common sense seems like a poor excuse.

I have no horse in this race (I barely know what laser-cutting is---I do know a bunch about rpm and deb packaging, FWIW) but I suppose the real reason is on the other side of the equation. But it seems they have to be doing something wrong for it to cost so much that they're willing to go, shrug, and pull their foot back out of the door. (Or they really just thought about the simple maths, and someone felt smart and brave to have do the painful decision.)

By the way, and this is 100% speculation, that "something" could have been an old dependency and/or architectural decision, so if your guess is right, there would probably be no better time to fix it than now.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So all the people still dumb enough to use windows and mac are making companies leave linux

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I think this is a bad take, a take that assumes one is superior for using Linux over proprietary alternatives

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No that's true, open source is superior is proprietary

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

free & open source model is superior to proprietary, especially for users, and for long term. (funding the dev part is a crazy hard problem, to be fair, but that's true for anything that should benefit users, including roads and health care)

but the point was that the "people still dumb" take assumes that Linux users are superior, which is a bunch of childish BS of course (wasn't probably even meant seriously)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

Guess you don't want any Swiss government contracts

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (1 children)

As a LightBurn user and license holder, this is annoying, but I could see this being a good thing in the long run. Right now, there is very little opensource alternative to LightBurn. As of today, there is a much stronger incentive to make it happen. I'm hopeful this spurs on a modern tool in the open source community that works as an alternative. What LightBurn might have done is save them selves some support overhead and created competition. We'll see how that works out for them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Indeed, this would be nice to see. For me, the problem is really that LightBurn is over kill, for a cheap basic machine, you really don't need half of what it offers. Heck, I'd love to see an Android software for lasers, and am surprised that hasn't happened yet.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What FOSS alternatives exist? This is exactly the reason not to rely on closed-source for hardware support.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There’s LaserWeb but apparently it doesn’t support closed source (Chinese) firmware so you’d need to change your laser’s controller…

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Might be worth doing some file analysis. The big CO2 laser at my Makerspace has a "proprietary" format that is really just PostScript. Working around that stuff should be doable.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

thats a big hit for non-commercial laser cutting enthusiasts
Between Visicut and Lightburn, the later was miles away even with its quirks and testing all sorts of stuff with boxes.py was a lot of fun

bummer

[–] [email protected] 91 points 1 month ago (1 children)

To our valued Linux users:

Fuck you.

Sincerely,

The LightBurn Software Team

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Oooo I didn’t know Lemmy had automatic translation lol.

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