So i have a 3D printer, and i have linux on a laptop but im struggling to find good 3D print-related software to use on linux or maybe i havent looked hard enough? Im pretty much a beginner to both linux And 3d printing, also using Ubuntu Mate if that matters on a old thinkpad.
So i need a 3d print slicer/way to print to my printer, i also need a simple 3d modeling software (ive tried blender but found it too hard and heavy for me and my laptop). It would help if all suggested software were open source or something like that.
Orcaslicer hands down.
For 3d modelling software, they all suck or have an unreasonable cost for what they offer. Openscad is something at least.
I’ve had pretty good results with Wings3D actually, as opposed to Blender. For proper CAD you can try Solvespace, which also sucks but at least has so little to it that you can learn to use it if you remember the idea of solving systems of equations at all.
Freecad is my daily driver and it’s pretty usable. Recently, it’s improved a lot, to the point it is now just mildly annoying.
Is that improvement past the 1.0 release? That update was great but it still needs some work and unfortunately I’m not the right kind of programmer to help either.
I tried a snapshot release a few weeks ago, there are new features, but nothing too significant for me. I’m mostly running a stable 1.0 release, but 1.1 should be released very soon, we’ll see if it’s a big jump, like 1.0 was. Still a long way to go tbh, especially in terms of QoL improvements. I’m talking - why is it so hard to just extrude some text. Why browse for a .ttf file in 2026? Things like that.