Need expertise before buying a first low cost 3d printer

[LuckyImperial]

AlphaBravo,

Welcome to 3DprintBoard. You can find hundreds of threads similar to yours with gobs of information on cost, customer support, and quality of entry level 3D printers.

A typical and mandatory word of warning:

The Prusa i3 is a RepRap printer and will require that you be comfortable with Arduino scripts, compiling/uploading Arduino scripts with Arduino IDE, Marlin/Repetier firmware (nearly all ship with Marlin), and basic mechanical/electrical intuition. IE, you will need to know how to use a multimeter, you will need to know how to solder, and you will need to be comfortable with wiring diagrams. Considering you use Linux I bet you check all of those boxes haha.

With that said...I have no experience with those exact kits. It seems like everyone under the sun sells Prusa kits and they are all very similar. Because of this I can only offer some general pieces of advice:

Acrylic is a cheap and very typical material to construct with, but is not as rigid as steel or aluminum. A well constructed acrylic kit will work just fine, but if you're ever wanting to push the limits of speed, a steel frame is advised.
The rails, linear bearings, and lead screws are usually the most cost sensitive parts of a Prusa. The higher quality they are the less slop you have in the printer. You can narrow down kits just by targeting ones that advertise quality linear bearings and lead screws.

Also, you should check out this thread:

http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...ing-a-Prusa-i3

PS: If you're a RapRap owner you can install all sorts of garbage/upgrades onto your printer. LED rings, High end Hot Ends, Actual 3D Printer Controller Boards (no arduino mega), Printed parts or whatever. It's open source. Mod that thign.