Closing the loop with Linuxcnc, adding encoders to Mesa FPGA?

[Kitwn]

2.8 IS stable 2.7 is no longer updated also it will not do auto squaring.

True that it will never do auto-squaring but it's still where you have to start in order to then upgrade to 2.8. My recommendation is to do a clean install of LinuxCNC and use the configuration wizards to get the machine largely set up. That will populate most of the configuration files you need. Then upgrade to 2.8. Unfortunately the wizards have not been updated to fully incorporate all the new features so this is where you need to manually make changes to the config files as described in the thread referenced earlier. It's very important that from then on you NEVER use the wizards to change anything.

I'd also suggest a separate hard drive for this process, leaving the existing one completely unmolested and the machine able to revert to it's current state at the swop of a plug.