I just got an email about this today. Here is more context:
To our valued Linux users:
After a great deal of internal discussion, we have made the difficult decision to sunset Linux support following the upcoming release of LightBurn 1.7.00.
Many of us at LightBurn are Linux users ourselves, and this decision was made reluctantly, after careful investigation of all possible avenues for continuing Linux support.
The unfortunate reality is that Linux users make up only 1% of our overall user base, but providing and supporting Linux-compatible builds takes up as much or more time as does providing them for Windows and Mac OS.
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.
Finally, we will soon begin building LightBurn on a new framework that will require our development team to write custom libraries for each platform we support. This will be a significant undertaking and, regrettably, it is simply not tenable to invest our team’s time into an effort that will impact such a small portion of our user base. Such challenges will only continue to arise as we work to expand LightBurn’s capabilities going forward.
We understand that our Linux users will be disappointed by this decision. We appreciate all of our users, and assure you that your existing license will still work with any version of LightBurn for which your license term is valid, up until LightBurn version 1.7.00, forever. Prior releases will always be made available for download. Finally, your license will continue to be valid for future Windows and Mac OS releases covered by your license term.
If you are a Linux-only user who has recently purchased a license or renewal that is valid for a release of LightBurn after v1.7.00, please contact us for a refund.
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.
Sincerely,
The LightBurn Software Team
Not saying they’re wrong to do this, but this is exactly what’s keeping Linux in the 1%.
The general difficulty of setup, poor & buggy hardware support and the inevitability of dropping to the command line are bigger issues.
To be fair, without the context, I would be able to apply this to Windows and to some extent even macOS that works better with common hardware but has it’s issues with specific cases
Windows and Mac are far easier to use and have much better hardware support than Linux and very rarely force you to the command line. Maybe I missed your point…
Well, my experience is that both windows and Mac require you to go command line if you want something unusual even in the slightest
If there was widespread backing by powerful, moneyed agents then it would stop being 1%. The EU is currently experimenting with digital sovereignty. They could adopt Linux and make a EUnix (Yoo-Nix) that is on par with Windows in terms of features and ease of use.
That email could have been a lot shorter.
“Dear valued Linux user, fuck you.”
… sincerely
Well im glad I didn’t buy a license, I imagine license checking is the hardest part of maintaining the Linux branch. Oh well
This is crazy, just make a flatpak or appimage at least instead of building for every distro.
we will soon begin building LightBurn on a new framework that will require our development team to write custom libraries for each platform we support.
Sounds like a fucking terrible direction to take your software development into if it’s so difficult to provide support for the simplest OS of the three.
FOSS is the only answer. Fuck capitalism. Fuck paid software.
It doesn’t sound like it’s difficult, just extra work that they don’t want to do.
For example they might want to use native USB instead of libusb which is LGPL. I’ve done that in the past because libusb was lacking some features. It means you have to implement your USB code for each platform and doing that work for Linux probably isn’t worth it, even if it isn’t difficult.
FOSS is the only answer. Fuck capitalism. Fuck paid software.
Grow up. FOSS is great but it obviously isn’t the only answer.
Security issues.
wine
I read where they say they can’t possibly build it once for a platform with a decade of guaranteed compatibility; that their CI/CD is so bad they can’t possibly trivially test builds on more than one or two platforms; that their packaging is so sad they don’t even want volunteers to help make it happen.
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