Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Linux PC's, EMC, and BDI

Weyland wrote:

> Okay, ignorant newbie question...
>
> Why am I seeing all this hallabaloo regarding problems
> with Linux installs and losing programs?

Linux has a "hardware compatibility list" which tells what hardware
has been tested successfully with a particular version of Linux.
There are a lot of pieces of hardware, especially graphics cards, that
have never worked quite right under Linux. The reason is that the
Taiwan garage shops buy a "developer's kit" for a particular chip
set, configure the options for memory, clock generator and ramdac,
and then make the entries into the Windows driver to support it.
They then put a Windows driver disk in the box with the card, and
ship it, after a 5 minute test under Windows. They make 1000 cards,
and then their supply of memory chips, ramdacs or clock chips runs
out, and they reconfigure for whatever collection of parts they can
cobble together. This modus operandi means there are literally
tens of thousands of different graphics cards out there that are all
quite similar, but not able to be run by the same software, unless that
software can detect the differences and adapt to it.

There is no way the Linux developers could possibly support this mad
jumble, even if the makers of these short-run cards documented
all these variations. The above description is worded for graphics
cards, which seem to be the worst offenders, but network cards and
motherboards seem to suffer from similar things.

The only way to make sure you have hardware that will work reliably
under Linux is to follow the hardware compatibility lists. For the most
part, they try to detect these "card of the week" outfits and flag you to
beware of them.

I don't know about any "losing programs" problems. The one problem
we have is machines locking up. But when you reboot, all the programs
are still there.

> Is EMC not fully debugged?

There is not ONE emc, but many. I think there have been over 20 versions
released. The newest release is NOT fully debugged, just like any other
software being currently developed. If you want to join source forge,
you can download a brand new version nightly! And, YOU can be doing the
debugging. Or, you can get a version that is considered trouble-free.
I am using a 20-Dec-1999 version of EMC, because it was totally solid,
even if it lacks a few minor new features. Well, maybe they aren't so
minor.
But, for my actual machine tool, I MUST have reliability! And, I do.
In over 2 years of use, it only hiccuped once! That is VERY reliable.
It even rode out a power failure that was long enough that I was looking
over
my shoulder to locate the flashlight before the last photons from the house
lights went away. That was a good half-second or so, but the machine
kept cutting right through the blip!

There have been a number of problems that made the later versions of EMC
unreliable. I hope that finally this problem has been taken seriously, and
that
much progress seems to have been made on it in just the last week.

Jon

>
> What is BDI?
>
> I checked *a* Linux site, and read that both
> of the old laptops I have are cleared for use without
> any problems, so I'm getting curiouser and curiouser...
>
> Also, how would one get to install Linux if a laptop doesn't have a CD?