Which CNC system to install?

Hello all. I am working on a Sherline replacement EMC machine. I have had major problems getting the parallel port drivers installed. I am in a place where I can start fresh with a new install. My first question is which CNC OS to install.

I currently have Debian stretch i386 installed but my new machine is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor. I originally used i386 because I have sherline software discs, which is worthless due to the video drivers used in the Ubuntu OS. I would like to use the EMC software from that disk. I have the original i386 deb files intact.

Parallel port card is a single port MCS9865. My best guess at the moment is that I should have tried installing the parallel port drivers before a making any system upgrades.

I plan to install a 64-bit version, but the question is which OS wheezy or stretch. Opinions are welcome.

Thank you for your reply.
I don't know what era your thinking this machine is from but is not that old and there is no built in parallel port.

Unfortunately none of the options you presented work on fresh Debian Stretch install. I did try 2 of the Debian nonfree ISOs, debian-live-10.4.0-amd64-gnome+nonfree.iso and debian-live-10.4.0-amd64-kde+nonfree.iso. Neither of them will install due to the old no apic problem.

Unless you have any other success suggestions I'm back where I started trying to get parallel drivers installed.

Thank you for your help.

Its always best to use the standard distributions. from the main site go to downloads.

I would suggest the Stretch build and select this ISO for 64 bit.
linuxcnc-stretch-uspace-amd64.iso

This will use the preempt_rt kernel which may have an impact on latency over RTAI but Wheezy may be too old to support all your hardware.

If you have to use RTAI, I would look at a Linux Mint version. I fouind Mint had much better hardware driver support out of the box. But that was before the Stretch ISO existed.

Thank you! I will try that ISO.

The the build I installed was linuxcnc-stretch-uspace-amd64-r13.iso. I don't think I have to use real-time, this machine should be fast enough without it.

There are so many ISO's, is very difficult to know which one to use.

You have to use real-time, no ifs or buts. It doesn’t matter how fast the machine is.
There is a Mint ISO that has linuxcnc installed that you can boot from USB and run the latency test to see how it will work.

That is true doesn't every linuxCNC install use real-time?

Okay so I tried mint 64 bit. It will not install due to the APIC problem in the options tab with noapic does not work.

all of the debian stretch builds have the same kernel problems trying to install parallel port drivers as all other I have tried.

All I need to do is get the parallel port drivers installed on any system, I don't care which.

Is there an appropriate Forum for this?

Normally you do not need to install parallel port drivers

Every PCI card ever made as to have a driver installed.