Complete HOW-TO Linux Mint 18.1 32/64 RTAI or PREEMPT with RIP install or deb

Having cleaned out my old Dell I am now going to attempt again to load LinuxCNC. I had managed previously with a lot of assistance but as a 73 year old school boy find a bit of difficulty in following the process. I appreciate there will be some benefits in understanding Linux but my main objective is to get my CNC machine running. I could have used the easy Debian way but I also intend to bring in Inkscape, which is why I have gone with Mint. I will start at the very beginning and work my way through and the reason for this posting is to seek advise of any points I should be aware of.

IMHO it is less complicated to try to install linuxcnc on Linux Mint LMD3, just copy the list of repos from the Debian Stretch CD, add the key, install the right kernel and then install linuxcnc. You can do all this from Synaptic.

Floris

Thanks for the suggestion Floris. Have had a very brief look at Debian and will download a stand alone version to USB stick. However "just copy the list of repos from the Debian Stretch CD, add the key, install the right kernel and then install linuxcn" sounds very straight forward but unfortunately I am none the wiser as to which repos etc are required? I assume I can go to the start of this post and find out?

Hi mate!
unfortunately, politicians want us incapable, we must not be intimidated by a simple search ...I give you an approximate list of the steps necessary to install linuxcnc on LMDE3, but remember you may need some extra precautions to make it work properly, personally I installed it only in simulation mode and I can not tell if it works 100% reliably on a work machine.
1- Install LMD3 that is based on Debian Stretch.
LMD3
2- Download and run Linuxcnc Debian Stretch Live DVD.
LCNC Stretch
3- Go to "/etc/apt/sources.list.d" into the live CD and copy linuxcnc.list file to your Linuxmint Debian Edition-3 OS sources.list.d folder. 4- Reboot your PC.
5- Open a terminal and add the key for Wheezy from linuxcnc doc. page
getting LinuxCNC 6- Bring the PC up to date 7- Open Synaptic, search for linuxcnc package, utilities and dependencies The RT kernel should be among the recommended dependencies, otherwise search the kernel, linux header and image with Synaptic, check all of them for install. (you can download it from the first post). Sim mode doesn't require a RT kernel.
8- Reboot...
9- Donwload and install Grubcustomizer: 10- Open Grub Customizer and choose your installed kernel as your first booting choice.
11- Reboot...
12- Kindly tell us if the installation on your work machine was successful to share it and help others.

Floris

after a month of work it is certain that with a mesa 7i77 board on board the latency value of 70 does not disturb at all.

Thank you for making this effort! This is a great tutorial! I haven't had that much time with Linux without getting a million errors.

I have compiled the kernel but am not sure which files to install. Could you clarify the following statement? Which .deb files I need to install? All of them?

You will have multiple files created in your home folder. The files will be in your root home folder named linux-headers-4.9.4-rt2_4.9.4-rt2-2_i386.deb ; linux-image-4.9.4-rt2_4.9.4-rt2-2_i386.deb, modules and a multitude of others. You can tell via the size and naming scheme which to install. In my case I wanted to install the kernel headers, modules and also the actual kernel. My kernel package [.deb] was approximately 45MB.

The files produced in my home directory are shown below. In particular, I see no files hinting to be "modules" judging by their filenames.

4,0K linux-4.9.4-rt2_4.9.4-rt2-1.debian.tar.gz
4,0K linux-4.9.4-rt2_4.9.4-rt2-1.dsc
4,0K linux-4.9.4-rt2_4.9.4-rt2-1_i386.changes
140M linux-4.9.4-rt2_4.9.4-rt2.orig.tar.gz
89M linux-4.9.4.tar.xz
936K linux-firmware-image-4.9.4-rt2_4.9.4-rt2-1_i386.deb
11M linux-headers-4.9.4-rt2_4.9.4-rt2-1_i386.deb
43M linux-image-4.9.4-rt2_4.9.4-rt2-1_i386.deb
426M linux-image-4.9.4-rt2-dbg_4.9.4-rt2-1_i386.deb
852K linux-libc-dev_4.9.4-rt2-1_i386.deb

Thanks!