Running Autodesk EAGLE 9.6.2 on Xubuntu 22.04

So, I did a fresh install of Xubuntu 22.04 on a Dell Latitude 7390 with an Intel UHD 620 display adapter. I had some issues with the machine locking up just a few minutes after startup. I was able to resolve this by adding the following kernel option to the /etc/default/grub file.

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash i915.enable_psr=0"

The resolved that issue well enough, and most everything using OpenGL (e.g. Atom, Firefox, etc.) ran just fine after that. The only thing that was giving me trouble now was EAGLE. WebEngineContext would issue an error about not being able to initialize and then the program would seg fault.

WebEngineContext used before QtWebEngine::initialize() or OpenGL context creation failed.
Failed to create OpenGL context for format QSurfaceFormat(version 2.0, options QFlags<QSurfaceFormat::FormatOption>(), depthBufferSize 24, redBufferSize -1, greenBufferSize -1, blueBufferSize -1, alphaBufferSize -1, stencilBufferSize 8, samples 0, swapBehavior QSurfaceFormat::SwapBehavior(DefaultSwapBehavior), swapInterval 1, profile  QSurfaceFormat::OpenGLContextProfile(NoProfile)) 
[5376:5376:0100/000000.883007:ERROR:broker_posix.cc(41)] Invalid node channel message
Aborted (core dumped)

After much googling, I came across a seemingly unrelated thread where they were removing some of the files from the internal lib folder to force EAGLE to use the system defaults. Since these seemed to be relevant to the error message I was getting, I decided to move the following library files into a folder named “backup” to see what would happen. Those files are shown here.

libX11-xcb.so.1
libxcb-dri2.so.0
libxcb-dri3.so.0
libxcb-glx.so.0
libxcb-present.so.0
libxcb-sync.so.1
libxcb-xfixes.so.0

After that, EAGLE actually opened. Of course, the fonts were huge on a very small 13.3″ screen. I had to go into Options -> User Interface to disable the “High DPI Scaling” option in order to get a more reasonable display.

Now, EAGLE seems to run beautifully. Fingers crossed that we can keep running Autodesk products on Linux in the future!

Milling PCBs with Linux…

This is a quick outline of my LinuxCNC setup. Basically, I have an old HP Compaq Pentium IV that’s running Xubuntu 14.04. I had to install the Xenomai real-time kernel in order to make it work with LinuxCNC 2.5.2 which controls my Chinese CNC3020T.

I’ve been using 0.1mm 30° engraving bits for etching which have worked nicely. For drilling, I’ve got some carbide 0.7mm drills. I haven’t broken any of them thus far. I’ve setup a Dremel 3000 with a 220-01 rotary tool work station for additional drilling by hand.

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For sanding, I’ve been starting off a freshly etched board with a 180 grit sanding block and then moving down to a 320 grit for smoothing. So far, I’ve been impressed with the results. The following picture shows a single pass isolation trace after sanding at ~75x magnification.

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