On Thursday 04 August 2016 11:44:06 Thierry de Coulon wrote: > On Thursday 04 August 2016 15.25:02 Jonesy wrote: > > "TDE 14.0.0" ? > > I'm on TDE 14.0.4 with Slavek's Preliminary stable builds. > > Yep :) > > openSUSE is at "Leap 42.1" and TDE at 14.0.4, but I see no reason to > update as everything works fine here and I did not identify any > feature that justifies an update. > > Long time ago (Gene may confirm) Linux users were proud to state that > their kernel was still bellow 1.0, meaning it was good and stable and > did not need to upgrade. > Well, I'm still on wheezy (debian 7.11) running a Debian 3.16.7-ckt25-2+deb8u3~bpo70+1 kernel. Because my hardware requires a real time kernel, the other 3 machines are currently running a 3.4-9-rtai-686-pae #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 3.4.55-4 kernel, specially patched and built by the linuxcnc folks. The pae on those machines does not work but they don't have that much memory anyway as it runs everything I need in 2 gigs. But I do update all 4 machines daily as linuxcnc is in constant development, and I, not running a commercial machine shop where downtime=loss of money, so I am running the development branch because I can afford to bleed a bit it they break something. I enjoy playing the part of a development tester. > Now, everyone has been trained to think that any piece of software > that has not received an update in the week is probably no more > supported, insecure and maybe dangerous... Those non linuxcnc updates I get from the wheezy repos are supposedly security only updates, but there are several such updates a week. Or a huge drop of fixes for tde-trinity from slavek's repo. Other than some pretty big problems introduced in linuxcnc as they changed the kinematics to divorce an "axis" from a "joint", which were then arbitrarily linked in the axis display .ini and .hal files, several of which I found and reported, one of which cost me about $30 in broken tooling, found and fixed the next day, and a loss of speed in the one machine that still uses software step generation that caused some strange errors, its been an enjoyment to me that I have helped to stabilize the next official release. The above change was made to simplify the configuration of a robotic arm with many joints and degrees of movement freedom. In some robotic arms, a move of the end of the arn and its final 2 joints carrying the gripper, aka effector, in a straight line from point a to point b may see 5 motors all moving at the same time, but at different rates needed to keep the effector moving in a dead straight line within a micron or so. Or to carry a plasma torch (or a water jet cutter) to cut complex shapes out of what ever material is being used. Or a MIG welder, writing a message on steel or just doing a precise weld, joining as many parts as the jig will hold at once. Limited only by the code writers imagination. We have some tools to help us write gcode, tools I may play with occasionally but have not used to cut metal unless I need a hole cut of a certain size and depth. Generally, because I may have expensive wood under the tool, I write my own gcode. > I'd still happily be running SuSE 8.2 if it supported my hardware :) True, but hardware does wear out and get replaced with more capable stuff thats needs drivers to make it do the best it can. So we upgrade. And sometimes the upgrade is a pita. I wore out the cheap small mouse on this machine, so I go get another lookalike, only to discover that to save batteries, it puts itself completely to sleep and must be woke up again with a press on the buttons on the side. And that has led to some mouse miss-fires as I wave it around to locate its curser. Thats a PIMA, and I'd much rather put a battery in it twice as often. To say that I am happy with tde is an understatement. Except for the no audio after a restart problem, I have nearly zero complaints. > Thierry Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>