New to the forum questions

I'm new to the forum, and new to linux all together. I am currently using mach3 on my home built 4x4 plasma table. I'm very excited about making the switch to the dark side that is linuxcnc/plasmac. I'm almost to the building process of a new 4x8 table that will replace my 4x4. I'm good with mechanical knowledge(machining, welding, CAD, etc.), but my downfall comes with understanding computers (other than drafting). Everything about the new cnc build is completely different than my first build.
My materials for this build:
Gigabyte brix J1900 (4gb ram and 120 SSD)
Mesa 7i96
Mesa Thcad boards (one for THC, the other for RodW's "hypersensing"
Keling 5056e
570 Oz Nema 23's
48v 13amp powersupply for drivers
3:1 reduction drives for (x,y1,y2)
a bunch of other odds and ends as well.

I would like to get all of my electronics completely figured out and working/running before I make a single cut in steel. I work in a 24x24 foot building, so the mechanical side of the build needs to go quickly. I won't be selling my 4x4 until after I finish the 4x8 and work out any bugs that it, or the air scribe, may have so I want to get all of the electronics squared away before I start building the machine itself.

The problem: I'm 24 years old with very minimal software skills. I am attempting to switch from mach3, and NOTHING is the same (which is a good thing, because mach 3 is lacking a lot in the plasma department!) I've been reading random information for over a week now. I finally have my hard drive set up to run 2.9 master branch. I used the buildbot commands and the synaptic package manager. When I try to run linuxcnc, it won't open, and I get an error. When I'm reading these different threads, I see a lot of words or abbreviations that I don't understand the meaning of. A lot of times even when I google what it means, the explanation doesn't make any sense. I was wondering if there's a "linux-lingo-for-dummies" document on here somewhere? I'd like to get moving on this project, as I have all of my electronics and materials ordered (if I didn't order them all at once, I would have made excuses and bailed on the project).

Thank you for your time, and your help!

- Cody

-Ps: I'm not looking for someone to just do it all for me, I really want to learn what I'm doing with Linux! I get frustrated easily when it doesn't come to me quickly, and so far, it's made me want to pull my hair out:-)

By the way, I'm stuck around 4.4 or 4.5 of the PlasmaC User Guide

Hi Cody,

Welcome to the dark side..

Linux is a learning curve, if you want to go quick, you stay at window's and mach3.
If you want to go higher level you need to spent time in Linux.

In your case it's less frustrating to hire someone like Phill, or Tommy, or someone on this forum that has experience with your mesa set up. I'm not for hire and have no experience with mesa.

In the end, it will save you frustrating times when you don't know how to go. Understanding linuxcnc can easely go up to 1 year or more.

So that is step 1.

If you want to do it yourself, start with the debian 64 bit stretch hybrid, follow the plasma c install guide, connect your hardware, etc.
But i think you have to hire someone on this forum that helps you go ahead in a few day's.

Contacting Rodw can also be a good starting point.

That's how i think about the situation.

Good luck.

It's like 3 pages long. It won't let me copy the text to paste it. I took pictures of the text, but it won't let me post those because it says that the files are too large.

Thanks

Grotius wrote:

Hi Cody,

Contacting Rodw can also be a good starting point.

He already has!

Anyway Cody, it looks like you got over your buildbot hurdle.
Be sure to open a terminal window and start Linuxcnc by entering the command linuxcnc

Then if you get errors they will print on the terminal and you can cut and paste to a text file. (the default text editor is mousepad) but a lot of us have installed Geany which is much better (sudo apt-get install geany) if I got the spelling right!

If linuxcnc is opening up to the chooser, make sure you observe the version number in the splash screen that is displayed on startup. Does it say 2.9?