this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2026
210 points (97.7% liked)
Linux
64383 readers
667 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Peripherals...
• A document scanner with pretty great Windows software that has features that are not nearly as easy to do with FOSS Linux software (splitting documents, auto cropping and alignment, OCR, etc)
• A 3D printer that doesn't have Linux software, so I can't easily send prints to it from Linux
• A webcam that supports device-level configuration (zoom, cropping, etc) but doesn't have Linux software to control it
Out of interest, which printer? Anycubic Kobra by any chance?
Regarding the camera: you could probably script this with ffmpeg and let it output the cropped stream as a virtual camera but I am nog going to pretend this sounds very appealing to most people.
Regarding scanning. Maybe you can scan to PDF and then use this: https://github.com/alam00000/bentopdf . does seem to do OCR also but havent tried it myself.
Printer: FlashForge AD5X (more in this comment)
Camera and scanning: Yes, I could put together some sort of solution, but "you can get it working by spending time putting a solution together that entails more manual steps (or scripting or whatever) and/or requires the CPU/GPU to do more of the work" is something I'd prefer to not have to do. And this makes it less compelling to advocate to others if they also have any such peripherals or workflows.
The 3D printer doesn't support a plain serial interface via USB? I believe most can accept g-code over it and most slicers can serve it? Been a while since I was using non-Klipper printers though
FlashForge AD5X using FF's Orca Slicer, which has better support for their IFS, and for which there isn't a Linux build. The printer is in a different room, so running a dedicated cable isn't a viable option (and would regardless still fall into the "inconvenience or compromise of using Linux")
Definitely not a fix but have you tried this? https://winboat.app/
I have a KVM/qemu VM (which doesn't work for some things because of the lack of an easy way to do bridged networking over wifi) and I've tried WINE (which appears to not support a DLL that FlashForge's Orca Slicer needs to work). WinBoat is on my list to try, but my guess is that it also won't support bridged networking over wifi, and I've already spent too many days on this problem.
Just confirmed that Winboat (like Docker, KVM/qemu, and other container/VM solutions) can't do bridged networking over wifi. At least one Windows app that I'd like to be able to use (FlashForge's Orca Slicer) needs to be on the same LAN as the printer in order to work (in LAN mode so it can be used from more than one computer).