Linuxcnc only for hobby use? NOWAY!

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19 Apr 2018 11:05 #109290 by ghislain.vdwalle
Hi there,

on cncexpert.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/servo-calibration-mystery/ I found the following text concerning LinuxCNC:
quote:
"nefastor says:
July 16, 2014 at 12:03 pm

real-time happens to be my job, so I could tell you in detail why Linux real-time kernel isn’t what engineers call “hard real-time” but this is far beyond the scope of a blog comment.
Just trust me on this : if you’re going to machine for hours and days at a time, you really don’t want a PC to take care of your servo loops.
It might work, but you wouldn’t sleep well at night
Hard real-time starts at the hardware level, and PC mainboards and processors just aren’t designed with the necessary features.
To an OS like Linux, “real-time” means video playback.
To someone like me, “real-time” means constant response time to interrupts.
It also means you can’t use processor caches.
Huge difference.
Like I said, this could fill several books (and in fact it does).
I guess in the end it depends what you want to achieve :
if you’re making a CNC mill for DIY projects that you’ll only use twice a month to make cheap parts that you can always do again if you fail, then PC-based “real time” is acceptable.
If you want to make a professional machine tool that must work 24/7 and never fail, then you can’t use PC hardware.
Look at the big professional CNC,
They use dedicated hardware and EtherCAT, not PC’s and Ethernet.
Which brings me to ask you : what’s your goal ?
Do you want to make a simple machine for non-critical use or a professional machine ?"
unquote

This text is in my opinion serious enough to get a professional comment.
We use in our shop LinuxCNC on a daily professional basis for 6 years now on 3 machines, without glitches whatsoever.
Using CNC machines since the 1980's, processors at that time were about 40Mhz and doing the job.

kind regards,

Ghislain Van de Walle
The following user(s) said Thank You: tommylight, probamo

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19 Apr 2018 22:15 #109310 by tommylight
Had the same battle when i was working as an IT administrator for OSCE ( Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe ) that went something like this:
other IT: a computer with Linux is not a hardware router like Cisco
me : Of course, Cisco uses 233Mhz processors with stripped down linux, i use fully fledged Linux with 2Ghz proccessors
other IT: see it is not the same
me: Of course my solution is much better and faster with way more options, and constantly updated, Cisco does updates once in a ........lifetime !

Same here, Much faster computers and Linux, Big manufacturers still insist on using windows !
That is just beyond comprehension, as windows is utterly useless for anything Mission Critical, as proven by one of the mars landers that used a stripped down version of windows 2000, it never reported back home, ever. Oh and that thing with viruses on the international space station........
Using Linux since 1998 for firewalls, since 200....something for everything including several industrial machines that work 24 hours a day, never had a problem caused by software, ever.

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