MadModder

Thanks Alan -- very nice. I've long admired your Stepperhead lathe. It is a full CNC machine running on CNC software, not an electronic change gear project, so it seemed more appropriate to show a video of its screwcutting capability here.

If it's using TurboCNC, I'm guessing it uses a hall effect sensor for feedback while screwcutting, rather than an encoder, but I could be wrong.

Did you ever build Stepperhead 2?

Works perfectly now, bravo!

It?s probably full of them Steve. At the moment I?ve walked away from it to preserve my sanity.
The turret is in an odd jammed state, not being able to move the tool disk forward or backwards. Something is mechanically stuck, but also my oil central heating boiler in   the workshop has sprung a leak requiring total replacement. I?ve had the new one delivered (?3049 !) but not yet installed. I am required to employ a registered installer so that?ll be a few more ?100?s

Man if it's not one thing, it's another....

Remember this?

So the strengths of operating systems based around a Linux core are that basically anyone who wants to can come out with their "Linux" and the same for their applications. But it also has a negative effect of creating a Babel of "Linuxs" and it is difficult to know which one will suit a person best -- especially without trying a bunch of them. But to do that, they may be different enough that each requires relearning .

The other problem is that many of these operating systems want to be installed onto hard drive in order to experience them at their full speed and capabilities. While some have so called "liveCDs" or live versions which are run-able without installation, they don't give an adequate impression of the installed version.

One alternative to full installation is to try to run a particular Linux OS in a virtual machine on another system -- a Windows version, for instance. But this often leads to other problems in speed, and usability, particularly if access to ports or other protected primary OS facilities are required. Also it's often tedious to set up and/or run a VM, and they can take up a LOT of space on HD.

A third possibility are some of the very few OSs that can be dual booted beside an existing Windows installation, and are compact enough not to seriously diminish HD space. Puppy Linux (which also comes in a variety of named OS's -- adding even more confusion) is designed to take up minimal space for the entire OS, plus applications (generally a gigabyte or less, total).

Other than the bare OS, all storage for additional applications and data can fit into a single folder within the Windows partition. Puppy linuxs typically are small enough to be loaded entirely into RAM at boot time, including applications. This allows the OS to run extremely fast, since there are greatly reduced disk accesses.

The fourth possibility is an offshoot of Puppy linux called EasyOS -- which is what I use. This OS is also extremely compact, and can be installed like Puppy Linux, beside an existing Windows installation. But the alternative that it is actually designed to work very well with is to run entirely off of a thumbdrive, without even needing the system's HD.

This makes it portable between computers. Everything is on the thumbdrive (unless you choose to store something on the HD). In effect the thumbdrive is the computer, and the actual computer is just transparent hardware that runs it.

Naturally, the faster higher quality thumbdrive will run this OS faster, but remember that the OS is generally loaded entirely into RAM during a session, so it runs at RAM speeds. The only noticeable reduction in its speed for a slower thumbdrive is while booting, or saving back to the drive at the end of the session, or as commanded during the session.

Now, yes it IS possible to install this OS on an HD, and that's what I have because that's all I use, and I want absolute top speed booting or leaving.  And it is truly fast in every aspect on this recent laptop of mine.

Okay so enough about that. Back to Linux based OSs in general.

Applications. Most Linux applications were until a few years ago compiled by the developers of each separate OS to suit their OS (and their taste). Thus applications for one variety of Linux OS probably wouldn't work in a different variety. However things began to consolidate back then when Ubuntu, which had for a long time compiled it's own programs and maintained repositories of custom compiled apps, switched over to using Debian applications and package management. This saved a huge amount of similar but separate effort.

Likewise some of the OSs I'm familiar with in the Puppy Linux family switched over from using first only homebrewed programs to later some Slackware compatibility, and then Ubuntu, and finally Debian apps. But there are still many Puppy-relates OSs that use other OS's repositories and apps. EasyOS presently uses Devuan apps -- Devuan is a fork of Debian.

Anyway, again, Linux is a huge subject if talking about desktop operating systems, and it is almost impossible to quantify. But it is possible to talk about as a history, and that provides some explanation of what it means. It's very different than Windows or MacOS or Android because each of those is a single entity main tained by a single company