Angry Birds, flash mobs, Russell Brand, fidget spinners. All of these were virtually unavoidable in the previous decade, and yet, like so many popular trends, have now largely faded into obscurity. But in a recent announcement, the developers of LightBurn have brought back a relic of the past that we thought was all but buried along with Harambe — popular software not supporting Linux.
But this isn’t a case of the developers not wanting to bring their software to Linux. LightBurn, the defacto tool for controlling hobbyist laser cutters and engravers, was already multi-platform. Looking forward, however, the developers claim that too much of their time is spent supporting and packaging the software for Linux relative to the size of the user base. In an announcement email sent out to users, they reached even deeper into the mid-2000s bag of excuses, and cited the number of Linux distributions as a further challenge:
The segmentation of Linux distributions complicates these burdens further — we’ve had to provide three separate packages for the versions of Linux we officially support, and still encounter frequent compatibility issues on those distributions (or closely related distributions), to say nothing of the many distributions we have been asked to support.
We’re not sure how much of their time could possibly be taken up by responding to requests for supporting additional distributions (especially when the answer is no), but apparently, it was enough that they finally had to put their foot down — the upcoming 1.7.00 release of LightBurn will be the last to run on Linux.
To really add insult to injury, LightBurn is paid software, with users having to purchase a yearly license after the time-limited demo period. Accordingly, any Linux users who recently purchased a year’s license for the software can ask for a refund. Oh, and if you’re holding out hope that the community can swoop in and take over maintaining the Linux builds, don’t — LightBurn is closed source.
While there are open source projects like LaserWeb that can be used to control these types of machines regardless of what operating system you’re running, losing LightBurn on Linux definitely hurts. While we try not to put our stamp on closed source proprietary software because of situations exactly like this one, we have to admit that LightBurn was a nice tool, especially when compared to the joke software that many of these lasers ship with.
The developers end their notice to Linux users with what seems like a particularly cruel kick while they’re already down:
Rest assured that we will be using the time gained by sunsetting Linux support to redouble our efforts at making better software for laser cutters, and beyond. We hope you will continue to utilize LightBurn on a supported operating system going forward, and we thank you for being a part of the LightBurn community.
So take comfort, Linux users — LightBurn will emerge from this decision better than ever. Unfortunately, you just won’t be able to use it.
I just want to know: why is the move sunsetting Linux support rather than doing a flatpak?
Maybe they lost their Linux devs and don’t want to pay to replace them.
My inner cynic says it’s more likely they wanted to ‘let go’ of them for the short-term profits bumps of not paying their wages, or they were paid off to drop support by one of the other platforms wanting to maintain market share in that segment… It wouldn’t be the first time for either move.
With 4% market share of the desktop operating systems, one has to ask why bother in the first place?
If the point is a user-friendly software targeted towards non-experts and people who prefer the convenience instead of hacking stuff, you’re unlikely to find many Linux users in your intended target audience. Of course, everyone likes nice software, but those who use Linux have really made their own bed in this matter.
Came here to make the same point, although I’d be happy with an AppImage as well, or even a Snap if push came to shove. Complaining about package management in this day and age just highlights the strong smell of BS emanating from their rationalization.
There’s a good chance that it won’t be long before somebody comes up with an FOSS solution. Here’s hoping it’s feature-competitive enough with Lightburn to cost them a chunk of their business, if not their whole business.
Flatpaks weren’t around a decade ago?
Not quite
Why don’t these machines just use a variant of G-Code and allow us to bring our own software?
They do, which is why you can use LightBurn (or LaserWeb) instead of the manufacturer software in the first place.
Read the support thread — it looks like they support 3 major Linux installs, and are struggling with saying “no” to hundreds of subvariant requests. So they chose the nuclear option instead of sticking to their “guns” on supporting just the latest LTS version (singular) of Ubuntu.
No personal skin in this game for me, but I feel for the company and employees feeling like their hand is being forced by economics to go this route. My day job is largely one of saying “no” to weird 1-offs, and I admit it hurts not being able to enable good work.
Cue in the arguments about “it should be open-source so the community can do the distribution for their own preferred versions”.
Yeah, true, but then you won’t be making any money out of it – so why pay any effort to develop the software? That’s the catch-22 of Linux.
Cue that XKCD about all of modern infrastructure teetering on a FOSS project being selflessly maintained by some guy in Nebraska since 2003. Not only do people do it, but literally everything relies on a few devs doing this and basically always has.
You can make money while being open source – you are paid for the support or services by the folks that actually rely on your product, by the otherwise monopoly so they can avoid scrutiny and of course by the usually one-off donations of the smaller users.
The real argument here is nothing to do with open/closed source; it is about whether you should be allowed to change the terms of the sale at all after the fact. So if you sell software as supporting x, it should have to stay supporting x at least until you retire that product. If you want to change the terms, you should have to be selling a new major version of the product and have retired the old. This is something no company on a subscription model will want to do, as they will probably lose customers who had kept paying for a service they hadn’t been using enough. For companies with a pay-to-own model for their users, nothing will really change except whichever users have been abandoned will be stuck on the old version.
The latter does seem to be more the case for Lightburn from a skim read – you buy the software and it will just work forever, and you just keep paying every year for a year of updates. This means, in my opinion, at the very least they should have to support Linux for a full year of updates with clear markings that Linux support is being dropped, and no new sales of the year of updates to the ‘L’ version. They clearly are not indicating this on their website yet anyway, with prominent ‘Linux support’ everywhere…
> you are paid for the support or services
Which creates the perverse incentive that your software should suck, so people would have to buy support from you. After all, if it was easy and straightforward, you’d be out of business.
>if you sell software as supporting x it should have to stay supporting x at least until you retire that product
That’s an impossible requirement if X keeps changing and breaking compatibility with your product on their side.
>struggling with saying “no” to hundreds of subvariant requests.
Red herring. This is like saying your website will start blocking all visitors not using Microsoft Edge, because you are getting flooded with “requests” for better Opera support.
If the requests are intentionally annoying, it’s possible not all such requests are even genuine but are working to this outcome.
The simple thing to do is support ONE distro (Ubuntu, unless the landscape has changed).
Give the mundane task of “saying no” to automated scripts and low-level low-paid employees. If the company is using skilled engineers for such things, management is the real problem (and the mis-used engineer should be questioning their life choices).
For the record, the yearly LightBurn license is only needed for upgrades.
If you let your license lapse, you can still use the installed version, you just won’t get updates.
Unless that’s changed, but I don’t think it has.
eh this is a pretty sound decision in my opinion, supporting UI on Linux desktop is kind of a pain across all the flavors. my guess is that they are gonna try to go forward on a new version on .NET which still has had lackluster support, however BLAZOR may prove a way forward that would offer everything we need, it’s pretty easy to use and renders reliably in modern browsers.
I should probably move to LaserWeb. I never use the CAD functions in LightBurn, since it’s closed-source and proprietary (duh). I do all my CAD in, er, CAD software and just use LightBurn to drive the laser.
Good. Maybe we’ll finally get some usable open-source laser software for Linux now, instead of everyone using LightBurn because “it just werks”.
This is the way. The “We can’t afford to support ALL Linux distributions” is like when you ask a slippery politician one question, and they choose to answer as if a different question were asked.
The OS is dedicated to the task, just pick the most popular one and problem solved.
Can we now all request weird versions of Windows support to get all Windows support dropped?
I really like that Hackaday is a site that can broadcast such information to so many makers at one time. This is providing a valuable service, notifying users to basically prepare for doom or to avoid depending on closed source.
It’d be real nice if they got the info correct though. That isn’t how licensing works for LightBurn.
It doesn’t matter. But, that’s also not how spelling works either.
Are they going to abandon all non-Windows operating systems?
I suspect abandoning MacOs will be a bad move if so.
If they don’t abandon MacOs, people could always go down the Hackintosh route and set up a dual boot machine that runs both their favourite Linux distro and MacOs. Which opens up some interesting possibilities given that MacOs is POSIX compliant.
It’s not going to be ported to Raspberry Pi OS then, I suppose. I am disappoint.
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