MXLinux - would this be a good choice?

Mornin' all. First post..

My background is general accounts/admin & hobby PC builder.... I've recently started using MXLinux (as in home use.. just office & internet stuff).. so I'm just getting on the learning curve.

A mate needs me to build a PC to run 'machines' and has told me he needs LinuxCNC to run them. I've got several old PCs available.. mostly 32-bit Pentium4 era which we hope to utilise, and we can go from scratch with these.

Being based on Debian, would MXLinux be suitable for installing LinuxCNC?

Thanks in advance!

At least on MXLinux 18 I was able to install 2.8 and the gmoccapy (sim...) worked fine.

One of the most reliable ways to get up and running would be use a pre-built iso.
For a pentium 4 era machine I'd look at this
www.linuxcnc.org/iso/linuxcnc-2.7.14-wheezy.iso

More info on this page:
www.linuxcnc.org/downloads/

Yeah yeah I know Wheezy has been archived but it would probably the best bet on such "old" machines. Now I'm assuming you are going to use a parallel port and a breakout board. USB isn't supported, no realtime support for USB.

Now there is no reason why you couldn't MXLinux, haven't used it myself, but a prebuilt iso would give your more time actually building & configuring your hardware, rather than chasing dependencies. Unless of course you are familiar with building "The Debian Way".

I've built Linuxcnc on Slackware & Salix but it wasn't for the faint of heart.

Yep.. parallel ports on the PCs for time being (limited budget). Connection at the machine end is being taken care of by someone who knows the kit.

I live a good way from the site... so ideally we need to be using same base Linux system in order for interim comms otherwise it'll get hellishly confusing real quick!

I'm easy with regards to what we go with... I'll stick LinuxCNC (Wheezy as you have linked above) on my PC at home if that what needs to be done... as long as I can stick Vivaldi on the desktop I'm good


Many thanks for responses so far.. b(^_^)