Any preference of opensource OS for printer host? Ubuntu, debian, redhat? I was entered in a 3d printer contest and have bits and pieces of a former prusa i2 and have played with a complete unit. Before i actually invest in my own printer i want to start with the computer that’s going to be accompanying it. Windows is what i used in the past. I want to go open source from this point forward. So any suggestions on OS?
I like Debian and its offspring (including Ubuntu).
It doesn’t take much on the host hardware side (I’m working on setting up OctoPi on my Raspberry Pi), so any old computer you have should be fine.
I suppose any GNU/Linux OS will work, but OctoPi really is the way to go.
satellite c650d-st6n02 is what i’m going to be running. i do have a raspberry pi (currently as a xbmc media streamer) and thought about octopi but it’s in daily use so the satellite is the printer workhorse.
Printers that don’t need host PCs are more reliable. 
I’ve had many prints fail due to serial comm failure, even one with OctoPi. Is there a firmware that supports uploading gcode to the SD card via network or wifi ?
OctoPrint allows uploading to SD and then printing from that, giving you all the cool features of Octo but making it as reliable as hostless printing.
@Jim_Squirrel mmh, a Laptop. I’ve used Ubuntu as a host OS, which was relatively painless. But somehow, the Ubuntu guys aren’t really sympathetic anymore, so today, I’d recommend Fedora instead. They even specifically advertise their 3D-printing-friendliness, and generally, stuff just works on Fedora without having to mess around too much. I wonder what @Jan_Wildeboer would recommend…
@Thomas_Sanladerer How would that work ? Do you need to manually move the SD from the Pi to the RAMPS, or is it something more sophisticated ?
@Shachar_Weis you leave the SD in your RAMPS. OctoPrint will upload the gcodes via serial, which isn’t the fastest thing out there, but works and keeps you from moving the card back and forth.