Here’s a bunch of things that are on the infamous to-do list for the Fab Lab. If you’re interested in helping out with any of them let us know. I’ll make this a wiki post so others can help keep it up to date.
We could just build the laser material rack with 2-by wood but it probably wouldn’t look great. I have money in the budget and would like to see what we could with metal. Either way, the rack will need to hold a lot of weight as the masonite can get pretty heavy when we get a new load. I’d appreciate a few ideas on this project.
I recently walked past a pile of 2x3s at home depot. They caught my eye BECAUSE THEY WERE ALMOST ALL STRAIGHT. Persistent carpenter types will know, 2x3s tend to be banana boards.
So I bought ten and have nearly used them up. Much better than the 2x2s I sometimes used on such projects not needing to hold up a second story. [2x2s also persistently curved].
Consider a 2x3 shelf rack? I have more trouble choosing shelf itself. Waferboard fail recently as screws werent solid in it. The pressboard materials will sag with age and rather quickly. So…plywood or lumber.
Do we really want to update those computers to Windows 10 now when we’re less than 2 years from Windows 10 End of Life (14 Oct 2025) as much as I hate 11, we’re in the world now where everything should be going Windows 11, or finding ways to get off of Windows for good. Looks like Light burn works on Linux.
I know that DOD is still banning windows 11 for all workstations (they mandate 10). Also the fablab pcs cannot be updated to 11 at all, much less in a supported manner. They don’t have new enough processors and they don’t have enough ram. I haven’t tried to look at the win 7 machine to see if it can be updated to 10; but, I wouldn’t recommend remaining on 7 either way due to the fact that security updates are not being released anymore.
-Adam
The USAF has not released any guiance suggesting that currently. My point for mentioning that is that win 10 will likely not go fully EOS until all of their major stakeholders have migrated to win 11 which is predicated upon the security and stability issues in win 11 is fully cured.
That being said my main point is below that part of my comment.
I never recommended staying on 7, God nothing running Win 7 should ever be connected to the live internet if you ask me. Just adds to the bot nets that the rest of us have to deal with the results of.
I was simply saying we shouldn’t deal with this again in less than 2 years, Microsoft has made it clear when the EOS is, Windows 10 Home and Pro - Microsoft Lifecycle | Microsoft Learn and they’re not going to change that simply because some big client hasn’t moved, they’ll simply charge extra to that client so that said client will receive custom security updates that the rest of us will not get. It happened with XP and 7 it will happen again.
I also never recommended putting Windows 11 on those machines, I know they can’t run it. Hell my gaming machine can’t run Windows 11 cuz I don’t have the correct security chip.
There’s no reason I can think of why those machines can’t run a LTS version of Ubuntu, 22.04.4 LTS should run on those machines and will receive feature updates until June of 2027, and Security updates till April 2032 that should give us time to source updated computers, and it won’t cost anything but time, which is far cheaper than the cost of Win 10 licenses.
I just moved my daily driver onto Debian Stable (Debian 12) to get off of Windows 10. I have installed both inkscape and lightburn with no difficulties and have them running albeit with a “dummy” laser on lightburn. It would probably take a half day of tinkering to get it set up on the laser computers but its doable. Debian stable is good thru 2028.
Fun fact - there are many industrial tools at my place of work which still run on Windows 7, and even one I know of that runs on DOS 6.22!! Thank goodness the DOS machine is airgapped lol
Thank goodness the DOS machine is airgapped lol