LinuxCNC on Linux Mint 19

I’ve had linuxcnc 2.7 wheezy setup on the same PC and wanted to switch to Mint for the look and feel of desktop.

I believe that may have been the issue.

So is a dual boot my only option if I want to stay with Linux Mint?

Also do I have to use a live cd or can I use a live usb?

Mate has been backported to wheezy, if that is the desktop you like. (You'll need to google for install instructions and don't forgot wheezy is in archive so your apt sources will need updating, it was discussed last week on the forum, a quick search will turn that up.

You can use a USB stick, but if you are using Windows to put the image on the USB stick use win32diskimager. After installation you can install the MATE desktop, google for instructions on that.

Or if you want you can follow these instructions
gnipsel.com/linuxcnc/uspace/debian9-rt.html

And choose the MATE desktop instead of xfce

In reality xfce4 is lighter weight that MATE desktop wise.

In actual fact I use xfce4 with some tweaks to the font and the whisker menu with only one panel and prefer it over MATE for my Linuxcnc install. I rolled my own install disc so this is how it appears after first login, no screen asking about default panels and such.

Joined up to say a big thank you to BigJohnT

I'm almost done with my baptism by fire with getting LinuxCNC working and followed his instructions to install Linux Mint 19.1 RT Kernel & Linux Mint 19 LinuxCNC and it's alive !

I'll try do a build log when I get a chance to document my trials and tribulations to hopefully make others lives easier. This is my first time with LinuxCNC and haven't touched Linux in about 20 years so was a steep learning curve.

The short of it is Dell 9020 SFF with SYBA SD-PEX10005 & Gecko G540
Originally tried the version as per the download link found at
linuxcnc.org/docs/2.7/html/getting-start...etting-linuxcnc.html
Lan doesn't work, tried for a while but no success
Tried stretch version from here
www.linuxcnc.org/testing-stretch-rtpreempt/
Lan worked, everything seemed to work, used lspci - v and confirmed Parallel card working (address was e010 for mine), When booting LinuxCNC would get an error about Linux parallel port not found & Unexpected realtime delay on task 0. Unable to get any motion. After exiting LinuxCNC reran lspci - v and noticed that the Parallel card was now coming up as disabled, reboot would re-enable it but as soon as I loaded LinuxCNC again it would disable it.
Installed Mint 19.1 as per BigJohnT's instructions, ended up with the same problem, on a whim changed the Parallel card from the short PCIE slot (16x but wired as 4x) to the full size PCIE 16x slot. Problem solved. No idea why this changed anything and hadn't seen this mentioned anywhere but it fixed the issue so I'm happy, was only leaving the full size PCIE empty just in case.
I think it would probably have worked on the Stretch, but Mint 19.1 is much nicer and I'm getting comparable latency so why not.

A couple of observations / questions
The install for me with a reasonable internet connection took maybe 5 hours, this is vs maybe 1/2hr on the stretch install so not something I would want to be doing on a dozen machines one after the other.
My Mint 19.1 install appears to be about 35gb, this isn't a problem as I gave it a 60gb partition to run with (dual boot with windows) but I could have easily been caught out if I hadn't of allowed it enough space.
Booting takes about 5 minutes with most of the time just a blank screen, this was rather off putting as at first my thought was that it had crashed. Not sure if the roughly 35gb install and 5min boot time is normal ?
Once it's booted it seems snappy and stable, just really slow booting.

Once again thank you BigJohnT for your step by step, was as easy as copy and paste.

There is already a lot of info on the forum relating to building Linuxcnc on Mint, well the particular thread is 18.1....but it's the same procedure, one issue that comes up is a missing dependency here and there that can be found by searching the net. Usually it's intl is missing (something along those lines).

No that's not normal....what size swap have you got ?

Usually the looooong boot time comes from the boot scripts trying to find a non-existent swap partition.....ie the uuid has changed or it's not there at all.

Bit of info on long boot times, relating to what I mentioned.
askubuntu.com/questions/625072/deleted-s...w-boot-takes-forever

To be honest I'm not sure what size swap I have, if I even have one setup. It's quite possible I did something wrong when partitioning the disk as it already had windows on it and had to play around.

What size swap is recommended ?
I'll have a look when I finish work tonight

Nevermind, reading that link it looks like I can just turn off the swap, will try that a I don't need hibernation

the minimal HDD sizes are
ROOT / 20GB
SWAP / your RAM
Rest Home

you can go for a 32bit iso on a 64bit PC to avoid interupts and gain latency performance
BUT it is not nessasury as you can go for a real good mashine with 100k latency
if you use a Mesa FPGA you are of latency at all