Way back when I started in on home CNC, I did a trial between Mach3 and EMC (pre-EMC2/LinuxCNC days), and Mach3 won resoundingly for it's vastly better "fit and finish and useabiliy". Today I'm starting in with LinuxCNC again on a lathe conversion and eventually a conversion on a CNC mill with a "proper commercial control". While I'm finding LinuxCN vastly improved from the EMC days, it is still behind Mach3 in terms of "fit and finish" as well as documentation (terrible documentation seems to be the bane of all things Linux).
I think there will be two drivers to a shift from Mach3 to LinuxCNC if one does occur, and those will be: 1. General hate for Win8. Win XP, 2K and 7 were fine, 8 is an absolute POS. 2. Better hardware available to work with LinuxCNC, notably the Mesa boards. We still need to get away from reliance on ever changing system slots and to USB or Ethernet linked motion controllers though. What will not be a driver of any switch is "fit and finish" as LinuxCNC still lags Mach3 in this area. Indeed I have read posts in the LinuxCNC world with people extolling how they don't want LinuxCNC to look like a commercial CNC control which is mind boggling since the commercial controls have evolved far longer than LinuxCNC and set the standard in UI for machinists. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Comprehensive Server Monitoring with Site24x7. Monitor 10 servers for $9/Month. Get alerted through email, SMS, voice calls or mobile push notifications. Take corrective actions from your mobile device. http://p.sf.net/sfu/Zoho _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
