Zenbot/Gecko/LinuxCNC?

I understand your comment about the ISO. But since the OS needs to be customized with a special kernel to be usable with the Mesa, doesn't it still amount to a problem getting LinuxCNC to work? If there were a problem booting Windows on a Toshiba laptop, you can get your retirement that it would be solved in quick order, because people have a economic interest in things working. So I don't think the analogy holds.

I've posted the Gmoccapy problem on that part of the forum.

Good to know that you like the Mesa support. Did you use the configurator and did it work properly for you?

Some of this stuff is due to the newer OS versions required for newer hardware when V 2.7 is well behind and designed for Wheezy which does not have necessary hardware support and the fixes is in the development branch. Plus some dependencies available in Wheezy are not available in Stretch. Thats what is causing you pain.

I've posted a link on your gmocappy thread. I knew I had seen a report previously. Probably the best approach is to upgrade to master branch. See buildbot.linuxcnc.org
Under the master section (first section), you want this one:
Stretch (uspace: realtime with RT-Preempt, and simulation)

If you run the Synaptics package manager from the GUI menu, there is a menu option that allows you to add the required repositories then the option to install Linuxcnc master/2.8 will appear in the list of available packages. Its so long since I've done this but I think you just uncheck 2.7 and check 2.8 and apply the change. You can swap back to V 2.7 any time.

The good thing about Master is that it includes better homing features for your gantry (provided you have seperate home switches on each side of your gantry). This allows you to square the gantry just by changing offsets in the ini file.

And yes, I tested PNCCONF recently at the request of CMorley who wrote it. He has told me he's upgraded it and included better gantry support but I've not recompiled to test. Previously, setting up a gantry machine required a hack to configure a XYZA machine and then editing the hal and ini files to turn the A into the other side of the gantry (usually X again)

And don't tell me Windows is better with hardware support. It can't even install a bluetooth driver for my laptop from new. I managed to fix it by using an intel driver but then this was promptly replaced with the broken one again. So I installed a wifi keyboard and mouse which a recent upgrade also broke. Not to mention a $5k scanner being rendered obsolete by Windows10. Yesterday I wasted a few hours becasue a python module I am writing to print to a label printer broke and only printed half a label. Eventually, I proved it wasn't me, and bypassed the OS by using LPR to print direct to the printer. Of course a reboot fixed the problem. I am so over Windows, its only a matter of time before I ban it from my life totally.

Did you check the md5sum of the downloaded ISO file?
Any error while downloading could cause the errors that you mention, together with long boot times and instability while using that image.
Also worn out USB drives or counterfeit ones tend to do that a lot. Same thing goes for DVD-R, even the recording speed affects the usability of the image, there is a limit to what can be corrected with CRC error checking.

Far be it from me to come off as a Windows supporter. If I were happy with Windows, I wouldn't be here.

Having said that, when one steps back, it seems to me that my original evaluation of the tradeoff between UCCNC and LinuxCNC - which was based on what I've learned here and also based on the experiences of my CNC mentor - is pretty accurate. I've tried the out of the box solution for LinuxCNC and it doesn't work. There is a fix but I have to do extra work. I'm still a little confused about what I would actually have to do to get an ISO I could test drive. Maybe you could elaborate a bit. I went to the link and reread your post and I still don't understand. I'm not saying I won't give it a try, but if were going UCCNC I'd already be up and running by now (based on my CNC mentor's experiences). I'm getting weary of trying to even get to be able to test drive a reasonable GUI in sim mode, much less get my HW to work.

Your experience and mine with hardware support differ, but there is no point in arguing about it. The only points I would make are a) I don't blame this on Linux, it's that more people write Windows drivers to sell their hardware and b) as has been pointed out to me, Linux is a family of OSes, Windows is one OS. It is a lot easier to support a product on one OS than a family of OSes.

I still hate Windows. It takes years to boot up, and unless you have an SSD it is painfully slow until everything is paged in. And I hate the Metro interface. Between the bloat and them trying to turn the laptop into a tablet, it's a mess.

But so far I'm still afraid of how much work might have to go into getting a working LinuxCNC system for my machine.

I didn't md5sum the image but I doubt that is the issue. I used and identical USB thumb drive (both recent and new) to download and boot an Ubuntu image, and it works perfectly. I could try that. But in any case Gmoccapy will still be broken.

You are using an experimental ISO. You are so close, don't give up yet.

This thread might help
forum.linuxcnc.org/9-installing-linuxcnc...ter-2-8?limitstart=0
So from the buildbot page, there is a statement that says

This is the stanza you need to use (read the page carefully and find it):
You may be lucky and find that the ISO has been configured to access master branch but I doubt it.

You can choose to edit that file with gedit or similar (you'll need to have root privileges or use sudo) or use Synaptics..

The Synaptics package manager is used to install/uninstall programs and is a GUI wrapper around the lInux shell. Find it in your menu system. Open it and enter your root password. Search for LinuxCNC and see if there is an entry for master or version 2.8. If so you are in luck otherwise you will need to add those lines to that file referenced above either using gedit or the provided menu option in Synaptics.Then it will show.

Then follow Tommy's simple instructions in the thread above. I was stunned how easy it was to do this in synaptics and was quite gobsmacked by the smorgasboard of software available to install at the click of a button. You don't get that kind of central repository in Windows.

Despite your problems with crappy ISO's, your journey has been much easier than I experienced. I ended up compiling the PREMPT_RT kernel from source and I tried several distributions to get my hardware supported (After I had purchased the Mesa hardware). I settled on Mint which is very nice. Once I got that far, I compiled LinuxCNC from source as it was not that much more effort. But lets leave that for another day.