Which LinuxCNC HW for 2026+?

I have been using LinuxCNC/EMC1-2 for more than 20 years by now; currently, on five machines (one with Machinekit) - and every single of them now has issues with newer versions:

- probe tripped during movement  
- queue full  
- joint following errors  

It's a wild mix of interfaces and computers, two parallel ports, two Mesa cards, a RPi 5 (Mesa) and a Beaglebone Black (PocketNC).  
I have never ever experienced joint following errors before. I also made millions (guessing here, hehe ) of probe movements without any issues.  

Now, I'm not even able to finish a single milling job longer than 15 minutes without error.

I already went back to Wheezy (this also halved the latency again) and duplicated the setups without containing any probe pins,  
just to keep things going. Of course, I always forgot to switch back and rammed mills into the length probes and elsewhere.

While browsing the forum, I noticed that many others seem to have the same issues, but there have to be working setups.  

One machine was already converted to grbl. I always thought about this as a joke, and I now have to use my phone instead
of my handwheel - but it's actually not that bad. I also checked Acorn CNC and Masso, probably the way to go unless I find
time to develop sth on my own - the 87th standard. Lol.


I would like to stick with LinuxCNC, so which >>working<< setups could you propose?


Thx,
AS

If the old versions worked, why did you upgrade?

Wheezy seems to be recommended for parallel port systems anyhow.

If you can use PNCConf or StepConf, try making a new config with one of them, it often fixes annoying errors.

Your questions seems more like a complaint; this is free software, there's no big corporation backing the development, just volunteers.

Switch to Acorn CNC and Masso if you like, it's up to you.

This is a scam: shopcentroidcnc.com/acorn-cnc-controller/
The fact that 2 PCBs and a nearly useless power supply (far to weak to drive motors, easily replaced by 2 $5 "wall wart" power supplies) cost 363USD is truly absurd and outrageous!

"Some external components required. Software, PC, motor drivers not included."

Oh sorry, this was not meant as a complaint or rant.

My intention was to make clear, that basically all my completely different setups are failing to work - including
the ones which include a Mesa card. Which, at least to what I understood, is recommended or even the only option
after the golden parallel port times.

Issues started with 2.8.x on Wheezy. At that time, only the probing was affected, but I found that out
much later, after I deleted the 2.7 partitions bc I probed on a non-LinuxCNC machine.
Fixed it with a flipflop:
forum.linuxcnc.org/38-general-linuxcnc-q...move-deadlock#332412  
But there's sth wrong in the code, probably related to the RT system, as a longer latency makes things
significantly worse.

Everything with Bookworm and >=2.8.x doubled the latency and also brought the bespoken queue and
now also joint following errors. This does even happen on a Machinekit setup, after upgrading to a
tool center point capabale version on a five axis machine.
The most annoying thing is that there is no workaround. Not even increasing the following limits to absurd
values do help here. So the machine stops (without any mechanical errors) and there's nothing one can do.
On one machine this excusively happens with a rotary table. Randomly.

GUI doesn't matter. I only use the "blue one" and Axis. Stock settings, no plugins or mods - zero difference.


I have this Mesa Ethernet thing and the RPi variant. Both also have these issues with a bookworm setup.
What are you using?