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.
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.
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.