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Welcome to the community maintained website of the Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) Project

News

EMC on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

[Official announcement] of pre-built packages and a Live CD for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx".

Why are there packages only for 8.04 and 10.04

We have chosen to use 8.04 and 10.04 because they are "long term support" (LTS) releases. If you use an LTS release, you can be sure of support and security fixes from the Ubuntu team for 3-5 years. However, we would be happy to accept and host packages for other versions if a user/developer of emc2 wishes to contribute them.

Upgrading from Ubuntu 8.04 to 10.04 will remove emc2

If you use the Ubuntu updater to upgrade from 8.04 to 10.04, it will remove the emc2 packages. After the upgrade, you can install the new packages for 10.04. Instead of upgrading, we recommend performing a fresh install of 10.04 so that your existing 8.04 setup is retained; after installing emc2 on 10.04, copy your old configuration files and update them if necessary. This way, if you find that the experimental 10.04 packages do not work as well for you, you can simply return to your working 8.04 system.

EMC 2.4.7 release

The latest version of EMC is EMC 2.4.7. View a list of changes in this release Instructions on upgrading from 2.3.x to 2.4.x

EMC on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

[Official announcement] of pre-built packages and a Live CD for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS "Hardy Heron". After installing from the CD, upgrade online to emc 2.4.

Table of Contents

Linux Distributions

[The EMC2 Live CD] is based on Ubuntu 10.04, includes EMC 2.4.3, and can also be used to install Ubuntu and EMC2 to your hard drive. After installing, you can easily upgrade to the latest version of EMC2 over a network connection.

An entire special distribution of Linux is not needed to easily install and run EMC2; see [the instructions for installing the EMC2 packages for Ubuntu] 10.04. These packages are maintained by the EMC board of directors and are kept up-to-date (and provide a very easy upgrade capability) as new releases are made.

Specialized Linux Distributions

EMC2 on [ArchLinux] build and installation including the RTAI kernel patches [Arch-HOWTO]. Arch is a lightweight and flexible Linux® distribution that tries to Keep It Simple. The Arch focus on simplicity and economy for developers means, among other things, that the main effort in assisting the user is not expended in crafting GUI configuration tools — the package manager, for example, does not have an official graphical front-end — but making well-annotated configuration files and extensive use of shell scripts. This has earned it a reputation as a distribution for intermediate and advanced Linux users who aren't afraid of the command line.

Why won't EMC run on Windows?

  1. EMC runs in real-time, to give smooth motion. This is critical to accuracy and machine life. Hard real-time is not available on Windows in a price range many can afford... especially those interested in using a PC-based control.
  2. EMC is intended to control machine tools. Machine tools are DANGEROUS and reliability/consistent behavior is extremely important. Compared to Windows, few viruses affect Linux. Even without consideration of viruses, Linux is far more stable.
  3. The above also apply to virtual machines (e.g., VMware or Virtual Box) and emulators. It may be possible to trick EMC to run on a virtual machine but do so at your own risk!
  4. The above notwithstanding, one can access a running EMC machine from a Windows machine, e.g., by running a Windows-based VNC client or X11 server.

The future of EMC

Glossary


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Edited January 15, 2012 10:35 am by MichaelHaberler (diff)
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