Thanks again for the cool simulation tip!
I’ve installed LinuxCNC 2.8 (Debian Buster) from .ISO in a virtual machine on my MacBook Pro using Parallels Desktop, and I’m working to get it setup so it matches my Acer touchscreen laptop I use for controlling the plasma machine, which has been updated to LinuxCNC 2.10.
For my own notes:
The repositories for upgrading to LinuxCNC 2.10 are available at:
https://linuxcnc.org/docs/devel/html/plasma/qtplasmac.html#_package_installation_buildbot_if_the_user_has_linux_with_linuxcnc_v2_8
In addition to updating to 2.10, I also switched which flavor of Linux GUI I use. I think I switched to Cinnamon.
I tried to use the terminal command tasksel to switch to Cinnamon but it would not work. However, I was able to do a sudo apt-get install cinnamon (or some such) and got Cinnamon installed.
An important thing to install in a VM based on Parallels Desktop is called Parallels Tools. I could not install it at first because it required a couple of packages and the auto install of them was failing.
This article was helpful but I still could not get the Parallels Tools install to succeed:
Helpful, but the specific path(s) in the commands did not work, and I had to drag the “install” script into the terminal to get the path right. Then, some needed packages failed to install and the overall install of Parallels Tools failed with this message:
'An error occurred while installing the following packages:
- linux-headers-4.19.0-17-rt-amd64
- dkms
Install these packages manually and start the Parallels Tools install again.’
I was able to get DKMS manually installed via terminal fairly easily, but “linux-headers-4.19.0-17-rt-amd64” proved to be a pain.
I finally realized that at the initial Linux bootup choice screen, there was an advanced choices option, and “4.19.0-17-rt-amd64” was an older choice that I could select. Doing so seemed to install “linux-headers-4.19.0-17-rt-amd64” — which, interestingly, had me in the older kernel and Parallels Tools install was failing, but when I rebooted into the newer kernel, the Parallels Tools installer seemed to “see” what it wanted as far as “linux-headers-4.19.0-17-rt-amd64” and yet also was finally able to succeed.
I’m now trying to get the QTPlasmaC simulation to run. No success yet. Still working on it.