Debian Wheezy vs ubuntu lucid lynx

Hello EMC users,

my name is Till, I am brand new here and I never dealed with a CNC machine. Target is to build at first a 4 axis foam cut machine. The mechanics are absolutely no problem, thats "my business". But all electronic things including computer are a real challenge for me...

"By accident" I installed successfully the debian wheezy version of EMC on an old PC with a 3GHz Pentium 4 Processor on an ASUS p4p800-VM board. On the english site I found the debian would be the preferred operating system, but now on the german site I read that the ubuntu would be the preferred one. I am not a Linux-freak and I don´t p...in bottels, the ubunu might be more user-friendly for beginners so what can one recommend to do ? (I am only used to the german suse linux a bit)

Anyway the installation was successful and all components of the system work as far as I could see as amateur. So the situation could be worse. But I din not check any funktions of the EMC, just was clicking around...

Than you for comments

Best regards

Till

Hi

There is no 'prefered distro', a lot depends upon the computer you run it on.

Ubuntu 10.04 is out of date, has no more updates from Ubuntu, but still runs as it is.

Wheezy (currently 7.8) is in date with all updates regularly available.

However you may find a marked difference between them regards latency, in fact neither of them may run very well on a P4

First stage, download and burn both to CD and then run them as a Live CD and use the latency-test.

Depending on what results you get will probably inform the second stage.

regards

Thank you ArcEye,

I will do like you suggested. The next months I should get another computer only about 6 years old which performs better anyway. My Latency tests in fact where quite bad, max Jitter between 50000 and 80000ns. But maybe enough to set up the system until a better computer is organized. I will have some questions until the baby will work...

regards

Till

As far as actually using the distribution:
I use Ubuntu 10.04 and Debian and a little bit of Mint.
I have not tried Ubuntu 14.xx

I prefer 10.04 and Mint.
I find Debian annoying with lots of 'paper cut' problems and (for me) needing lots of software changes.
Besides the window manager in 14.x I would bet it would be nicer to use then Debian.

I do development work for linuxcnc and use linux for my every day stuff (for many years).
Of course if you are just using the computer for a machine controller, the distribution doesn't really matter as long as the latency is in line.

Choice is nice
my 2 cents.

Chris M

Ferox wrote:

My Latency tests in fact where quite bad, max Jitter between 50000 and 80000ns

You may be better off installing the Ubuntu 8.04 based distro.

This has a UP (uni-processor) built kernel and runs far better on single core machines.
You can upgrade Linuxcnc on it as far as 2.5.4 ish

First however, make sure you have hyper-threading and ALL power management turned off in BIOS
(fans turned to maximum all the time, suspend etc all off)
Try the latency check like this before you give up.

Some more reading for you

www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/forum...-the-latency-problem

www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/forum...me-latency-solutions

regards

Hello,

as I use the mentioned computer only as machine contoller, the setup of the system has to hit only this target, nothing else. So the suggestion of ArcEye also to check Ubuntu 8.04 is an option. Of course I will check all the measures to improve the latency. I wont give up that fast as long as I get help like this. Many thanks,

regards

Till