I’m wanting to move my main machine over to Linux, but I’ve heard mixed things about Orca Slicer working with Linux. Can anyone give any advice on either having it work or a Linux alternative with similar functionality?
Pick a well supported distro like Fedora or Ubuntu and you’re more likely to have less problems with things like that, because if the devs are testing against anything, those will be the distros.
Can anyone give any advice on either having it work or a Linux alternative with similar functionality?
The neat thing about installing Linux is that there are live versions around. Go to the Linux Mint site and follow their instructions on creating a bootable USB stick. Boot from it and you’ll have a working system directly on your computer. You can check if your hardware is compatible and you can also install software there. So if you have some doubts about Orca Slicer, just boot up a Linux and check it yourself on your own machine! It’s really that awesome
Prusa and Cura are available on flathub and work fine. AFAIK Orca isn’t in the main repo but the flatpak is on their github and works fine for me too.
I prefer Cura and it has native binaries and Flatpak.
I use Orca Slicer all the time on my Debian machine. Works great!
Orca on Archlinux user here. Its perfect.
What kind of hack-trash distro are you hearing about problems from?
Orca works great on Debian 13 for me (I installed it as a Flatpak)
Orca works just fine on Linux, probably even better than on Windows/macOS, which are a slightly neglected platforms from a dev’s perspective.
This is my experience. I do CAD in Windows, but Orcaslicer only works properly in Linux. On Windows, it tends to crash when I tell it to generate gcode for anything but the smallest prints.
Just as well, really. It reminds me to reboot, so I haven’t tried to fix it.
My experience with Orca on Windows is the same. Any complex model causes bedshitting, and I’ve tried basically all of the solutions suggested on their issue tracker. I had mild success with affinity tweaking (ie forcing the slicer to only use real cores. not hyperthreads) but it’s still hitting a ceiling.
At home where I’m running linux, Orca is perfect.
PrusaSlicer still works on my 2012 Asus laptop on Ubuntu 22. Use it weekly.
Prusa also works on my nixos 25 machine.
Almost definitely gonna be fine.
I’ve been using orca on Linux mint for the past two years without any issues. I used prusa slicer before, but I much prefer how settings are managed in orca. Prusa slicer feels like they stopped giving a shit 20 years ago, it feels so horrifyingly ancient to use.
I’ve had no problems with Orca Slicer. Bambu Labs tries to crash the entire time it is open.
Yeah something is fucky in this release of BBUslicer, it usually opens my file, but will sometimes crash once or twice first. Unfortunately, Bambu P1S so no Orca for me (EndeavourOS / Arch derivative)
Orca as a flatpak/AppImage works without any issues here.(Debian 13, Fedora 43) There is also a LinuxServer.io version which I tend to run on my server and simply use a browser.
Basically while I have Orca on my Fedora 43 Desktop and a Debian 13 test machine I got tired of synching the filament profiles and somestimes projects between all family devices (5 Notebooks, 3 Desktops). Therefore we simply have a docker container with the Linuxserver.io Orca. That can be accessed from every device and simply loads models from a NFS share. So filament and process data is unified at this single point.
Additionally it provides an added layer of security as my printers live in their own, fully offline, subnet and only this container,Spoolman/Spoolease and Home Assistant can access it. (Thank you Bambu rolleyes)
Both slicers work fine but there are some dpi scaling issues in my experience (both Orca and Prusa) on 4k monitors.
SuperSlicer has very good default Voron 2.4 profiles, but it is almost bewildering how many options it has
I just installed orca yesterday! The appimage mostly worked, but it wouldn’t actually slice. I removed that, and found it in AUR, installed that version, and it’s been working great. It doesn’t support my printer, so I can’t print directly, but I can save the stl file and then copy that over to print. I made a small plaque yesterday and printed it, and everything worked fine. (Garuda Linux, Arch derivative).
There is a Flatpak as well which is working really well. I had some issues with the app image in the past
I looked for the flatpak in discover, but didn’t find it. I didn’t bother looking further than that.
Its not in Flathub. You need to download the Flatpak file from GitHub
Ah, that’s why.
With the number of (custom) printers supported by Orca you picked my interest :) What’s your printer?
The Anycubic Kobra 3 v2. There might be a plugin or something, I didn’t play with it much, but by default it’s not in the list. When I picked a close one (the Kobra v2) I pointed it to my printer’s IP and it wouldn’t connect properly.
Ok. I didn’t find anything specific for Kobra 3 v2 (though I didn’t spend more than 5 minutes ^^), but I came across this profile for Kobra 3. Maybe you’ll get lucky with it… https://www.printables.com/model/982339-anycubic-kobra-3-orca-profile-v2-tested-verified-w
Thanks I’ll give that a try
