I can sense I'm moving against the grain here a bit. Our decision here is clearly not going to be the best for some if not most people.
The goal is to have the entire software stack as open source. Inkscape is already in heavy use for us with laser cutting, a small silhouette cutter (has it's own inkscape extension), and other applications so it was my natural goto. It also works on Windows, Mac, and Linux so it hits all our members.
We were thinking something like a Roland 24" with stand. As with the other tools we'd figure out the process and teach classes on it for those interested as well as have laptops setup and ready to go with the configuration. I just want to make sure whatever we get will work.
slice&dice It is not evident to me what operations would be missing with the plot extension. Can you speak to that? We have altered extensions in the past to add functionality and make things easier. Maybe we can add it to the extension ourselves.