{"id":15130,"date":"2025-09-30T11:48:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T18:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15130"},"modified":"2025-09-30T13:14:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T20:14:36","slug":"lightburn-drops-linux-due-to-packaging-overhead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15130","title":{"rendered":"LightBurn drops Linux due to packaging overhead"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lightburnsoftware.com\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/lightburnsoftware.com\/\">LightBurn<\/a>, the defacto software for hobbyist laser cutters and engravers, was built as a multi-platform solution so it could be used on a wide variety of platforms. But in a recent\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mailchi.mp\/c2dafe6db45c\/an-important-update-for-our-linux-users\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">email announcement sent out to users<\/a>, they announced they would no longer be distributing their software for Linux systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why? The developers claim that too much of their time was being spent supporting and packaging Lightburn software for Linux distributions relative to the size of the user base. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>The segmentation of Linux distributions complicates these burdens further \u2014 we\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>They&#8217;ve apparently tried multiple distribution mechanisms designed to fix these issues such as flatpack and appimage &#8211; but still encountered too many problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a reminder that the entire ecosystem must be healthy for your software to be healthy. [<a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2024\/07\/31\/lightburn-turns-back-the-clock-bails-on-linux-users\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2024\/07\/31\/lightburn-turns-back-the-clock-bails-on-linux-users\/\">Hackaday<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LightBurn, the defacto software for hobbyist laser cutters and engravers, was built as a multi-platform solution so it could be used on a wide variety of platforms. But in a recent\u00a0email announcement sent out to users, they announced they would no longer be distributing their software for Linux systems. Why? The developers claim that too much of their time was being spent supporting and packaging Lightburn software for Linux distributions relative to the size of the user base. The segmentation&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=15130\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-3W2","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15130"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15435,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15130\/revisions\/15435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}