Can LinuxCNC be installed on a USB drive and used on a MacBook?

Hi,

I’m new here. I’m in the process of building a CNCRouter and considering running the machine with LinuxCNC. Is it possible to install an image of LimuxCNC onto an external hard drive or USB flash drive and boot from that drive on a MacBook? I have a 2013 MacBook Air, a 2012 (I think?) MacBook Pro and a 2009 27” iMac desktop. I don’t have any windows machines. My hope is to be able to run linuxCNC on one of my macs without touching the MacOS internal drive to see if I like it before committing to buying motion controller boards or other hardware.

If it is possible to boot and run linuxCNC from an external drive, does it have some type of simulator or demo mode that will allow exploring some of the features and possibly running a dummy gcode program?

I have no prior experience with any other CNC controller software so whichever system I settle on will involve a learning curve. Also, do I need to know a lot about Linux to get linuxCNC running? I have limited experience with using Linux on a raspberry pi but only at a fairly basic level. Google helped every time I hit a hurdle while playing around with the RPi.

Jayne

Do I need one of the linuxcnc-uspace packages to install on a USB drive to run in simulation mode? I won’t be controlling any physical machine, this is purely an education exercise at this stage.

I will have a look at both the mint iso and also using VMware fusion. I have never used VMware before, will it allow installing the iso on an external drive? The drive on my laptop doesn’t have a lot of space left on it and I would prefer to fiddle with linuxcnc on an external drive anyway without disturbing the main internal drive. I won’t get a chance to try anything until next week though.