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Is there anything special you need to use that would require building from sources and patching?
For normal stuff, it is as easy as downloading the latest ISO file, installing it, then in a terminal type
sudo apt update
sudo apt install linuxcnc
That should also install the RTAI kernel together with the RTAI version of LinuxCNC, although i have never tested it.

I think ive made some mistakes that I dont have the knowledge or time to recover, so I have found a good video to build from source and am currently working on that. Thank you for the help, but due to me I'm starting from square one.

Maybe you can find something useful here:
forum.linuxcnc.org/10-advanced-configura...robe-and-touch-plate
forum.linuxcnc.org/10-advanced-configura...-tool-setter-z-touch

Would this be better in the "LinuxCNC documents" section?

More info on capactive sensors used with LinuxCNC:
forum.linuxcnc.org/plasma-laser/51568-in...e-sensor-to-linuxcnc
forum.linuxcnc.org/plasmac/38701-plasmac...-auto-focuas?start=0

There is no way of knowing if it works or not without actually testing it, there are to many types of them out there.
I can not read the chip type used, it might help to find out if someone here has used it.
I have used plenty of MOSCHIP or NETMOS ones in PCI version and they all worked, but PCI-E i have not used.

Pretty sure it might be possible to make LinuxCNC do something useful with variable frequency PWM, but i can not recall reading about it here on the forum, but there are some that used capacitive sensors with LinuxCNC and QtPlasmaC for laser height control, a bit fuzzy, but i think they used an ESP32 to translate stuff back and forth.
Some things to be sure:
-is it actually variable frequency PWM or quadrature signal? Quadrature has 50% duty cycle, PWM has variable duty cycle and frequency does not change, usually.
-Can it be controlled in manual mode with the up/down PWM? If yes, that would make things easier as LinuxCNC can output many types of signals like that.
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Personally, so far i have removed every capacitive sensor i bumped into, there are reasons they are not used in plasma anymore.

tcbmetalworks wrote:

It sounds like it's the most open source but the least user friendly. I really want to try to build my table idiot proof so if I get lucky and it gets to the point I'm not doing all the work myself and I can easily have a newbie operator run the machine.

Inkscape is not a CAM software, it just has a CAM plugin that outputs gcode. It is a drawing/scetching/whatever it does software, so the CAM is just an add on made by a single user (probably with some help of others, but back then he was alone with about 500 people asking for help and features from him), but it does work magnificently for what it does.
As for newbies, almost all machines i build are used by other people, sometimes people with absolutely no computer experience (yes i do bump into them occasionally), but it takes at most two days of 3-4 hours a day to learn to draw something or trace a path from a picture or image, edit it a bit, save it as gcode and use LinuxCNC to run that gcode. I am trying to say it is by far the easiest to use for plasma cutting.
Luckily, i do have a client that spent xxxx (nearly 2000$ i think, it was long ago) on every plasma CAM he could get, still uses Inkscape.
After all this i have a feeling you might take this the wrong way, as me pushing, well i am, so if you try other CAM's, please do report back how it goes, i would really appreciate it, a lot has changed by now in Plasma space.
What do you mean by "plate centering" ?

"Well if python3-distro is a required package and also in the readme so not sure where you went wrong... did you download and install the deb with gdebi?"

Yup, I used gdebi from the terminal