Hi, I a home hobby user, no revenue, just for fun home shop projects. I have an old Bridgeport BOSS 5 that was setup with Mach 3 with an Ethernet Smooth Stepper. I have a 4th access rotary table and I'm currently using Clearpath motors. I need probing, Some Conversational programming as well as be able to POST from Fusion 360. I used Mach 3 for many years, but I purchased a addon from a third party that offered improved screens and probing routines. Well this third party company went out or stopped supporting the product so the activation server went down. After a PC crash and not being able to recover my environmnet due to the copy protection, I got the bright idea to move to Linux CNC and go open source and I won't have to worry about copy protection or some activation server being inaccessable. I got a Mesa card, but as much as I want to like Linux & Linux CNC, I don't and as a result my machine has been offline for over a year. I got distracted by other things and now I'm kind of starting over as I don't remember where I left off or where my problems even where. It's a home shop that earns no money at all so I don't want to spend a fortune, but price is NOT really my primary concern. I'm looking for a system that Is reliable and I'll be happy with in the long run. Something that if it sits for 6 months I'll be able to fire it up and expect it to work and easy enough to operate that I'll remember how to use it. Also something that I can expect to last many years and be able to get replacement parts or upgrades long term. I'm faced with several options. Go back to Mach 3 & ESS, Upgrade to Mach 4, Tough it out and get Linux CNC working, Scrap everything and go to Acorn or Masso. Acorn looks very interesting. The software looks usable, but like it was written in the 80's or 90's. It's still seems way more intuitive than Linux CNC. The Masso solution looks a bit nicer, but all proprietary hardware, so I have concerns on replacement parts in the future.

What do you think?