It cost me ~£250 for a mesa solution for linuxcnc, I'd recommend going with the 7176e clive recommended me I didn't and it was more hassle getting a pc to actually work with the pci card I got. The 7176e is Ethernet so none of these issues.

Do you have 2 ballscrews and 2 motors on the Y axis? This is harder to setup but I managed it so you can lol.

Linuxcnc is funkier to setup, the linuxcnc forums are excellent though so you'll find plenty of help and once running it seems simple enough.

I like it and am glad I made the extra effort to go linuxcnc route (I would have gone mach 3 otherwise).