How to build Cura's slicer "SteamEngine" from scratch
Cura releases for Linux are often broken, probably because the author better implements features than packages (which is a good thing!) and because supporting Windows and MacOS is already painful enough ;)One of the last issues kept happening due to the linux package made only for 64 bit architectures, which is stated nowhere and not checked during installation. So slicing cannot run when your PC is running a 32 bit linux OS. The easiest fix is to rebuild the slicer, which is a piece of cake compared to 3D printing!
Note that the remaining interactive part of the application is fully functional though, because it is written in portable and machine-agnostic Python. The slicer needs C++, which also explains why it is much faster than the old and terrific skeinforge slicer.
Still, it is relatively easy to fix the issue, by downloading and installing the "deb" package as usual, then compiling the slicing engine on your platform and for your platform, and use the resulting executable instead of the provided one.
Default installation
Install the default package (mostly python Cura GUI). You probably have done it, else you can check the lastest build from Ultimaker website (the kind sponsor behind opensource Cura).
cd /tmp
wget http://software.ultimaker.com/old/Cura-13.12-debian.debsudo
dpkg -i Cura-13.12-debian.deb
Getting and building the 3D slicing engine
Now we will rebuild SteamEngine, which is Cura's very capable and fast slicer. Building may complain about missing development libraries, in which case you will have to install them with apt-get (eg. build-essential and some other *-dev libraries, look for them using google). If you do not have git on your system, you can get a zip file of the project by using the button in the right margin on github.
cd /tmpgit
clone https://github.com/Ultimaker/CuraEngine
cd CuraEngine/make
Installing your own build of the slicer
When OK, you should see a fresh new homemade SteamEngine executable file in the folder. Now check where your Cura is installed, eg. with:
cat $(which cura)sudo find /usr/share/ -name CuraEngine
And overwrite your engine (my existing 64 bit version was /usr/share/cura/CuraEngine):
sudo cp CuraEngine /usr/share/cura/CuraEngineYou should now be OK to run Cura entirely.
By the way, the source code of SteamEngine is quite neat, and it justs makes me feel I want to hack it all everywhere :p