Installing after support has ended

I'm curious what will happen if I try to install LinuxCNC on a machine after Ubuntu 10.04 LTS support has come to an end? I'm guessing I won't be able to install things like graphics drivers and miscellaneous software from the repositories, because there won't be any repositories. According to this from the Ubuntu release team the support ends in about a week.

lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announc...13-March/000169.html

Am I missing something or is it about to get a lot more cumbersome to use LinuxCNC? I've been using it since the first live disc on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and using the LTS releases of Ubuntu has worked very well from what I can tell but I haven't been on any of the lists or involved with development. Are things going to transition to Ubuntu 12.04 TLS, maybe another Linux distribution? Thanks!

Hi

The repositories will still exist, the ones for 8.04 are still there!

This is not windoze, where they suck you in to higher version numbers until suddenly none of you old stuff works, because nothing they make is ever backwardly compatible.

The only reason you need to do anything, would be if you replaced your hardware with stuff that is so new, its chipsets etc are not supported by the kernel in 10.04 - so don't until you know there is a replacement.

All the work at present is focussed on building a release that will work across various types of realtime systems and instruction sets (ie things like ARM too)

Presently the next release work is largely based upon Ubuntu 12.04, but that is mostly because it is still one of the easiest distros for beginners to install and as it is Debian based is quite easy to maintain

So sit tight and don't panic, the date will pass and nothing will change

regards

Is there anything known as to a time frame for a 12.04 release?

What are plans for emc, most manufacturers are putting onboard video, and no parallel ports?

ronb wrote:

What are plans for emc, most manufacturers are putting onboard video, and no parallel ports?

That doesn't really matter. Modern computers can easily accommodate a parallel port. For example this PCI Express card.

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item...j5mLcCFfNxMgod_zUA-w

I'd like to see a more common interface used on the motion control side and on the computer side but I can see why they still use parallel on a lot of things.

SvenH wrote:

Is there anything known as to a time frame for a 12.04 release?

I'm not a developer but I have a basic understanding of the situation and can offer some insight. LinuxCNC depends on RTAI for realtime computing functionality. The kernel used in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS isn't supported by RTAI at this point. There are two (or maybe more) possible solutions, either LinuxCNC could switch to a different realtime solution (there are a few other projects out there) or wait until RTAI supports the kernel in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

I don't know how much effort it would take to switch to a different realtime computing solution but I'd imagine it to be pretty involved and complex. I also don't know about the development of RTAI, when or if it will support the kernel in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. The short answer is it'll be done when it's done. If there's more to the story or there have been updates that I'm not aware of someone feel free to add to this or correct me.

"The only reason you need to do anything, would be if you replaced your hardware with stuff that is so new, its chipsets etc are not supported by the kernel in 10.04 - so don't until you know there is a replacement."

My earlier comment was aimed at this, as the pc market is declining and manufacturer's push for high speed video and gaming, we are losing ports. eide will probably be next loss, as long as boards carry agp or pci should be no real problem but there should be a list of video boards and or support for onboard video. I am aware nvidia and ati problems. Please let our working systems stay healthy. Maybe an ethernet to parallel or sata to parallel of some kind.

The basic situation is this.

The RTAI project upon which the realtime components of linuxcnc are based, has stalled so far as kernels beyond about 2.6.37 in the magma branch that we use.
It is open source with only one main maintainer, who has fingers in multiple pies.
(not to mention a full time job as a university professor)

This is slowly being updated and hopefully will be usable for the 3.5.7 kernel at some time not too far away.
This kernel builds, as does magma but there are problems building linuxcnc against it.

Knowing that all our eggs were in one basket, the developers have been exploring other realtime projects.

There is now a Xenomai kernel and realtime for 12.04 which works, I have it installed

RT_PREEMPT and other variants are being explored, the aim is to build a multi platform capable system that can be installed across different instruction sets and on different realtime systems.

The problem as always will be packaging, having a kernel that can be built and run, is far different from having packages integrated with a Ubuntu distribution that can be installed by someone who knows little about Linux and nothing about Linuxcnc.

It will all take time, because it has to be done once and done right.

...there should be ................ support for onboard video

It is not the job of the developers to support closed source or inherently defective video chips, because you choose to have a computer with it installed.
Unfortunately a lot of people are disappointed that their multi-core machine they bought for running Windoze and gaming or whatever doesn't work well with Linuxcnc
If you buy one knowing the criteria required, you will have far more success.

Intel have completely buggered up a perfectly good on-board chipset on the D525 Atoms by installing a closed source one on their successors the D2700 and 2800s.

Microsoft are pushing manufacturers selling machines with Windoze 8 installed to sell them with UEFI 'secure boot enabled', which means you cannot dual boot any other OS on 'security grounds'
So you won't easily be able to install Linux at all.

So no-one is doing us any favours.

It is an open source colaborative project, if you want to start a database of on-board chipsets and video cards that work, go ahead and start a thread asking for everyone's input as to what they have that works and publish a wiki, everyone will be grateful.

regards