Saturday, February 28, 2009

A good, cheap, Color Laser Printer for Linux?

The good news is that Samsung gets it, and is supporting Linux along with Windows/Mac.

For all of us who feel like second class citizens when it comes to NEW printers, I've found and purchased a color laser printer that actually comes with Linux Cups Drivers, and painless installation scripts. Finally, you don't have to take your photos on a road trip, to a Vista/XP box, to get a hard-copy, anymore!

Better news, it's a low cost Printer too. Toner costing less than $40 $50 each color, which prints about 1000 pages color, 1500 monochrome (so they claim). Which is half the cost of HP and Brother, where toner costs are like purchasing the whole printer over again. So it's seems very economical to us penny pincher's!

I'm talking about the Samsung CLP 315. It uses it's own SLP-C language, which is a bunch of tech jargon that you do need to know before you install it. The CLP 315 does not come with it's own drivers, rather drivers for CLP 310 (close enough, they work flawlessly). This printer only connects USB, and has no built in networking or ports, which makes it cost under $200 retail.

Unfortunately, GIMP (popular open source picture editor) does not support CUPS printing directly. At least not on mine. But it was the only software on my old Fedora Core 6 installation, wouldn't work with directly. The GNOME picture browser had no problem scaling images full page to the CLP 315, in full color. And Open Office worked flawlessly as well. Gimp was the only trouble maker, but as many of you know, Gimp only recently started using the new font engine that gave it the ability to use TrueType fonts. I'm sure they'll adjust soon, particularly if they get their hands on one of these babies!

There is a works around for the Gimp problem that is fairly simple. Set the scale attributes of the image (which most programs ignore), and print it from the command line using LP command:
$ lp -d printername filename
It's that simple! Then it can print at any size you want it to print, even spanning across pages to make posters and banners. See instruction on using LP from your MAN pages, or on the Cups website (cups.org). Or just use another paint/draw/browser program to print!

It works well with Gnome and Open Office, and KDE.

The only problem I found with the CLP 315 was that it a little lacking on rich reds, which even my other photo printers suffer on, too. And purples favor red more than blue, which makes wild flowers kind of hard to print in their real colors. However, the actual color of the Lakers road uniforms should come out fine.

There are those who always say, that lasers are not REAL photo printers. Whatever that means? Point is that these critics seem to be blind to the issue of resolution. Laser printers normally start at 600 dpi, rather than an alleged 300 dpi. This makes a huge difference. The reason why, is because lines that are just pixel wide, are now too small to be seen by the naked eye! So some complain that Laser's make their picture fuzzy, and less detailed- which is not true, at 600 dpi, they are sharper and more detailed, you just can't see it with the naked eye, anymore. Another issue of Fuzzy images, is Megapixels of your picture. Camera's under 7.2 megapixels take very small pictures. 7.2 Megapixels is 8 1/2 by 11 inch picture on a 300 dpi printer. So 7.2 Megapixels is only a half page on a laser printer.

If you scale up to make up for the super high resolution of the laser printer, you end up with Super Pixelation (those squares of colors), which make your edges look jagged. The only solutions is to buy a higher resolution camera, and invent a time machine, sorry!

There is some note about the smell the printer puts off, while printing. Frankly, it's the smell of all laser printers, but this one is so compact, that I think it just seems more exaggerated, once it's heating up more parts, closer to the surface than other printers. So if "Printer Fart" is an issue to you... Frankly, this doesn't stink any more than my Brother Monochome Laser does.

As far as speed goes, this is not a fast printer! It's a lot of information that has to be piped into it, before it can start printing, and then there's warm-up time from EnergyStar. As well as printing a page 4 times over (one for each color). 4ppm, not likely, more like 2mpp, but they are worth the wait.

I just remember another flaw in this printer, which we discovered with Gimp! There is no reset button for this printer. So to kill something off that is driving your printer nuts, you have to dig around for the power button. The one on top, appears to be useless (what is that thing?). The instructions aren't exactly verbose, should you decide to TRY and read them.

Please understand that I've owned this printer for less that 24 hours at this postings, so opinions about this deal, could change. But right now, I'm quite happy with the deal we made, and ecstatic about it coming with CUPS drivers for most Linuxs out there. If in the long run, it continues to cost about the same as an inkjet to run, I'll be very happy.

For you Mac & Windows Users that like to pay too much for things, the bad news is that this is a cheap printer that will work for you too! I'm sure if you talk long and hard enough, you can convince local retailers to over charge you- personally. Or you could invest the difference in a saving account? Just a thought!

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Linux, as I see it (2009)

Linux unlike Windows, is for the most part free! You can download a CD image, bake it, and install it in an afternoon. The trouble with it though, is that it doesn't come from just one source, but rather many from around the world. So picking a distribution is critical, once it insures that everything in the package at least works together. (Works well, is yet another issue).
Linux Distributions

Right now, the HOT Linux seems to Ubuntu. I downloaded one, couldn't get it work with my motherboard- but that's not unusual, my machine has issues uniquely it's own. I did get it to boot on another machine, didn't see anything all that special about it, so I did not install it, I just took a quick tour, running from CD. (Maybe the popularity is because there's even a Christian version now. What next Kosher one?)

Almost all of the Linuxs now will let you have a live demo, running from CD & Ram Disk. Rather than having to partition and format a hard drive, just for a peek. Which is nice, they are finally growing up. This change came about from the Business Card Linuxs, which were small enough to fit on a business card. Basically they created a RAM disk, and run from that, and now they all do it. This is an issue I'll come back to later.

I want to talk about those distributions, I've actually driven. I've been using Red Hat for nearly a decade- egads!?? Looking back, for a while Mandrake was hottest thing under the sun. Then there seemed to be a flood from Big Label Software companies launching their own, as an alternative to Windows. Then people got confused about the motives of Red Hat when they started the Fedora project, so there was a resurgence Debian again, and now to Ubuntu. Through change after change, I keep coming back to Fedora (Red Hat) as my favorite- I'm sorry!

Another thing about Linux, unlike Windows, is that it changes much faster. Each distribution has it's own schedule about releases. Which is both good and bad. Ironically what makes it good, is that it forces you to make frequent backups of your data. What's bad, is that occasionally, you will have to abandon that data to start anew with a new version (it's rare, but it does occur). In Windows, you can go a decade without a MAJOR upgrade. Linuxs might even be as short as quarterly (it doesn't mean you have to do it, though).

Once you find one you like, you can stick with it, I'm about to make change from Fedora 6 to Fedora 10 (I think). As said earlier, it kind of has to do with compatibility with my whacked out motherboard, that just doesn't always work out right. 6 was the last version that installs clean for me, which forced me to learn a lot more about the inner working of Fedora than I wanted to, just to get Java and Firefox updated, just to explore Wiki-Commons. But 6 is about to fall off the food chain entirely, so it's time for the BIG upgrade. Which also means, it's time for checking out a few new comers too- it's what I do.

The big three Linux Distributions are; Slackware, Debian, and Red Hat (Fedora). Almost all other Linuxs are a build/rebuild of one of these three. Then there is another class of Linux build from Knoppix, from Kernel.org (the official site of the Linux kernel), these are mostly business card Linuxs. Which I'm sure there will be more and more market for as embedded systems. Embedded Systems are computers in, devices. Phones for example, use mostly a Linux of some kind, and not Windows . I'm sure it has a lot to do with how tiny a Linux can be, as compared to Windows.

Almost all desktop distributions of Linux run Xfree86, and Gnome or KDE as their desktop. X is bones your graphic system. Gnome and KDE are like XP, or Vista, for the Desktop (user interface). Most do favor Gnome just because of it's license. This industry got burned by Unisys deciding to enforce it's method of compression which was used in a GIF files, which made the whole industry very touchy about the language of user licenses, and Gnome was not one thing build upon another thing, unlike KDE which was built from a tool-kit. So Gnome became the more popular with the experts who actually decide these things, and is therefore favored in most distributions today.

Business Card distributions:
These got their name because they were so tiny, they could easily be put on a 3x2 inch business card CD. Then when Flash Drives got big enough, they then could run from them too. Now Flash Drives are so big, you can run a regular distribution on them, not needing to go with stripped own Business Card versions. Anyway, the BEST of the Business Card Linuxs is/was DLS (Damn Small Linux), in my opinion. This one was not just gimmick, it was real working system, that I keep disk of, as rescue disk, even for Windows.

Of the Big Distributions:
Red Hat/Fedora is my favorite still. It seems to be a little faster than the others to me, and very solid. The packages are well organized for installing, but it's kind of hard to track down what you want for it. They aren't particularly generous with descriptions. Fedora can be very difficult to add third party software to, that doesn't come directly from their distributions. And they are sticklers to licensing, so you will have to go to third parties for support of MP3s or DVD Movies.

Debian is sweet, and much easier to add software to, because the packages are so well organized, and solid. But Debian is not known for being cutting edge, which is why I think they launched Ubuntu version. Debian's downside to me, is too damn many Web Browsers, and with Firefox, they renamed it Ice Weasel- What, "fucking annoying" was already taken? I just don't understand that renaming a product business. And like all thing's Debian, it's version 2.whatever, instead of the better version 3 build, too. So good luck getting those plug-ins, you'll need!

Slackware, is like the hardcore hacker version. I just can't recommend it to the guy plucked off the street at random. It's the granddaddy, and it sometimes acts like it too. Hackers only, the rest of you be damned. I've never had much luck with Slackware, so I gave up on it years ago, honestly. (Maybe they've changed, I'm being a bad reporter on this one, but it's a time issue).

Now, I'm not going to write a novel/textbook about Linuxs here at the moment (this is more than long enough). This was just my introduction, from those I've tried, from those which are the backbone of all others. In Open Source you can just repaint the graphics and icons, and call it your own, you know? And many do!

You got old hard drives hanging around (4gb min)? Put them to work and explore Linux, with just a hardware swap with what's in your box now. It's what I do! I've gotten Debian to run a 500 mhz AMD K5, with a 4 gb hard drive, and it did just fine. The motherboard died a week later, but I think the cause was old age, not Linux.

History of Linux Distributions

Sunday, February 15, 2009

One more stupid piece of %&*#!



Somehow, this just seemed to belong here, particularly with this topic! There are a lot of things in Linux (from 3rd parties), that will drive you nuts, when you try to add them yourself, so this seems twice as funny here!

I sure hope Sony has a sense of humor about this clip from Onion, because I'd hate to loose the profanity laced thing. Not that any Linux user can relate to this level of frustration! ;)

My brother has often said; The Language that Programmers know best, is profanity. I have no counter argument.

Automatic Picture Sticks (Making Picture Folder screen saver work (EZer))

Almost all modern Linuxs (Linuxi?) have auto-mounting these days. So you plug in your USB device, and bam it shows up as a Still Camera, or Hard Drive device, ready to read/write. No brainer, compaired to just a few years ago, when we had to Mount drives by hand, which is something I'll talk about at another time. Just be happy, it's now as automatic as Windows, these days.

Now, in the Gnome Desktop is a build in standard screen saver called "Pictures folder" (a slide show). But there are basically no instructions on using it. Too simple, I guess? What you do to make it work, is create a folder named "Pictures" in your home directory. Remember Linux is case sensitive, you need to make it exactly as I quoted it! Now, dump some pictures in there- Gif, Png, Jpg... Easy, and when the screen saver fires off, there are your pictures- Magic, full screen too. But I've got a super short cut for you, to go with making this work, even better.

BEFORE Windows had Short-cuts, Linux had Links. And today, when you push that CD in, it automounts into the "/media/" folder as whatever the volume label is. So your "reunion98" CD will mount as "/media/reunion98" automatically. Now in your "Pictures" folder, you can create link back to that directory. If you use the browsers to navigate back to "/media/", there is an option "Make Link" in the "Edit" menu, however frequently this doesn't work, when you can't write in the directory where you want to make the Link to. So in this case, you need to do it from the command line like this (open a terminal):
$ ln -s /media/reunion98 ~/Pictures/reunion98

That's fine as long as reunion98 is in the drive. Just a few years ago, CD drive, always mounted with the name CDROM. Which made these paths easy to predict, "/mnt/CDROM/" was were it was happening. Then when they added "/media " to it, they started using the volume label, which is set when the disk was toasted. This added clutter to my brain, and had me creating link after link, to the libraries of crap I've collected through the years. Then one day it dawned on me, do this:
$ ln -s /media ~/Pictures/archives
And now everything mounted (automatically) could be found by this screen saver, without there being a link to "scanksfrommars" on my machine. Yeah, sometimes I can be a little slow and stupid, particularly when it comes to scanks from mars!
;)

Now for the advanced class (a detailed look at the LN command, we used):
ln is the link tool from GNU.
~ is a shortcut to your Home directory, rather than having to type it all out (it works just about everywhere).
-s says make me a Symbolic Link (there are two types of links and this is the safer one to use, so you'd think it would be the default- so it isn't?). The cp command as well can make Symbolic links (see your man pages for instructions).

Monday, February 9, 2009

You don't really care, so why fake it?

NOTE to readers: This is commentary that I was going to delete. But I left it as a warning to you Linux newbies, as to what you can expect when you talk about Linux at parties. Yes, a few of you dorks, just might get invited to one, sometime!

One of the biggest lies I hear all the time, that right up there with my favorite:
"Someday, I've got to learn more about DOS." Which is changing to; "Someday, I've got to learn more about Windows."

These are lies, and every programmer knows that. Because if you knew anything about DOS, you would know, it only manages storage- it does nothing else that is useful. It makes files, and it deletes file, and that's about it. So what you mean by saying this, is a total mystery to us Techies?

So what's this other NEW LIE then? "I would change over to Linux in a minute, except I have to read/write Microsoft Office files all the time." How I know this is a lie, is because the second I point out that Sun's Open Office, which actually comes with all Linux distributions, and opens and writes all MS-Office files, I hear; "Oh, I didn't know that! Is that dip?" And off they shoot, like a person with diarrhea, across the room away from you.

If YOU want to shoot down Linux, Microsoft Office is not a good argument. THE ARGUMENT/excuse is; "I would but I need better support and hardware drivers." Bingo, there is the flaw with running a Linux workplace!

I had the displeasure of buying a Kodak printer recently. And while Kodak gives meaningless lip service to Linux, they don't and will never support it! They are Windows shop, and that's all! Ironically, Kodak cameras work perfectly fine with Linux, because of the USB standard, not because they support it.

Why is Windows / Apple so popular? It's because they do all the work for you, and distribute precompiled code (like I can't reverse engineer that)! God forbid that we should ever have to tell anybody about the secrets of talking to our printer. They clone us for sure! When the guys that are going to clone you, already know all your secrets to begin with. It's just dumb! What they are really afraid of, is intelligent people like me, asking question that they can't answer from a script of stock answers. The concept of actually having to know your product- it's a lost art.

I have respect for men that are honest; "I'm lazy, I don't want to work that hard, and I like things done for me!" Yeah, like that's going to ever happen.

Getting passed the fluff: The real question is not; "What is Open Source?" it's "Why Open Source?" And the stock answer is just stupid: "So you can change it!" Well, if you have 20 years to learn the whole topic, maybe! The facts are that a whole bunch of GNU and Linux are written in scripts. Which means you get code, not a program. Granted it will run transparently like compiled code, but it's not. This came about so that multiple authors could work on the same project, without perfectly matching systems. It's easier development. So it's for their convenience, not so much yours- making that change, is a lie to most of us! So today all Linuxs have Perl/Tcl/Bash/Python/Ruby installed already for you, because it's the backbone of the whole system.

That's just kind of a bonus topic tossed in here.

When I started in computers, years ago. Everything came with a price. Which was ok, because it was a reasonable price. I don't begrudge anyone from making money. But when it all narrowed down to just Microsoft, instead of the prices going down, they went up? I didn't become anti-Microsoft, it was the other way around; Microsoft became anti-Randy! Like they wanted to force me off the market. Today, I think that YOU are wasting your money on Microsoft, which is what makes me an advocate for Linux and Open Source. It's all about economics with me! I can run my business today, on the price of Hardware only. Can you say that?

It's just funny that I never hear anybody say; "Someday, I'll learn more about Linux." I'm sure somebody some where will say it, or I wouldn't have started this blog!

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Clogged drains, my printout is stuck in pumbing

Every once in a while, a SAMBA resource will get shut off.
Yeah, so?
Normally this will be a printer.
And again, so?

Well, in Linux this is a don't panic situation, but I KNOW YOU just might anyhow. Because, I have! See, Linux doesn't tell you it can't do something, like print to a printer. It goes about it's business, buffers the job, and pretending that nothing at all is wrong. You go to your network printer, find it off, turn it on, and no job comes shooting out. So you go back to your dag blasted penguin screaming about incompetence, pull up your work again, and print it all over again, to go back to the network printer, and find no job coming out? Aaargh!!! What good is it to have a tantrum to a box, when the box ignores you?

So where is it? You check the Windows machine, and the print que say, EMPTY, no jobs here! Where is it?

Now I'll clue you in on something that doesn't happen often enough for me to remember it. I learn by rote in my advancing years; If I do it wrong long enough, it's sure to become right, sooner or later! Right? Right? Right? Come on, I'm proving a point here; Right? Right, right, right? Agh... I'm to old to remember the subject now, I so win! See, works every time.

So now we have a network plumbing problem, of your print jobs ending up the the twilight zone. Where are they disappearing to? Damn Windows! But nope, not Windows fault, not this time!

Back on the ice burg, your penguin has decided that your print jobs, are for storing, not sending. Cups (the print driver) is malfunctioning, by not being able to talk to the network printer the very first time. It doesn't bother to poll it again, when you ask it to resume, either. Very annoying.

Why you need to become the root user, to change the setup on a printer has always been a mystery to me, but it's what you have to do, to unclog the pipes. While ANYONE, can reboot your machine, at any time. But a print driver, needs Secret Service Protection? Who designed this stuff, what where they thinking? So you enter your root password, only to find all your printers present and accounted for, nothing wrong.

Except one teeny tiny detail, that most likely will not jump out at you. The checkbox that says Active, will be now off. Click that sucker, to turn it back on, and the 50 copies you wanted will come shooting out, six times over from every trip you made, trying to figure out what went wrong with "damn Windows"?

I hope this is something fixed/or will be soon, by great gurus out there, before I forget again, and break a printer, throwing it through a window!

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Fonts: Do you see what I see?

I remember the first time I tried to add True Type fonts to Linux. I crashed the whole X windows system, and had to overwrite my whole hard drive again, to fix it. Lesson LEARNED! Find your documentation and follow instructions, CAREFULLY. What they don't tell you about your distribution package, is Linux is a mess when it comes to fonts. There like three different Open Source systems, any one of which, or all of which, could be in use on your system. Some programs may only used one, or the other. But what I'm about to describe, seems to be working more universally all the time, with more applications.

YOU WANT THE SHORT CUT and the easy way to font up your system: And the good news is, that there is one! You actually can just drag-n-drop those fonts you stole from Windows, or purchased legally, and have them installed and working automatically. But you really have to do it in the right place.

Start by going to your home directory, and create a sub directory named ".fonts". Remember that Linux is case sensitive, all lower case.

Now where did it go? Disappeared didn't it? It's there, but in Unix systems, files that start with a dot, are configuration files, that are hidden automatically. So click View up there on your menu bar, and then click Show Hidden Files. Now you can open that .fonts folder, and leave it open. Find the fonts you want to add to the system, and drag-n-drop them right into place. If you copy them with the cp command, you will have to logout and login again, to get them activated, which is why I recommend that you do it with drag-n-drop right in Gnome. This little trick seems to work on all systems I've played with.

However, the fonts are not shared this way. But we're assuming your computer is a single user system anyway.

Once this is done, Firefox and Opera web browsers will look right, once most web pages these days are being designed in Windows, using Windows fonts- which don't come with Linux. I believe that even the newest versions of Gimp (a good photo-editor) will even use them now.

User Accounts and Passwords

Let start with RAW Linux.
Linux is a multi-user, networking system. Has been from the start, unlike DOS. And when you setup user accounts, unlike with Windows, you are isolated into an unshared home directory, which programs will create local configuration files in, as well as your personal data files. So access rights are configured into 3 groups of information.
1) You, the account. (Read, Write, Execute)
2) You, the group user.
3) Everybody else!
The only exception to this being unshared, is the root user, who has access to EVERYTHING!

So when you create a new user account, you are creating three things at once:
1) a new user is added
2) a new user group (with 1 member)
3) a new home directory is created

When you installed Linux, you were forced to create a password for the root user, and then create a user account, on top of that. Or you will have to! The passwords can be a pain in the butt, and they really aren't all that secure, which makes it all the more annoying.

Most systems will not let you login as root with Gnome, or KDE. Which is just another annoyance, that isn't that protective either. I like Fedora because you can have access to the whole system as the root user, unlike the rest.

The root user is what called Admin in Windows, he/she is GOD of the server/workstation. But it's not recommended that you be root all the time, so they do everything they can to discourage you from that. So they force you to create at least one user account.

Now passwords are another ANNOYING story. Basically, somebody came up with a goofy set of guidelines about legal and illegal passwords. For example, no actual words should be used as passwords. So "password" would not be legal. However, "pa55word" would be legal, cause it's not a real word, and it contains letters and numbers- bonus bucks right there! Yes, it's that annoying, but I'm going to teach you a way around it. When you start a new account, use any (legal) password, and once we're in- we'll fix it!

I don't think there is a Linux on the market today, that doesn't boot into X terminal running Gnome or KDE or some other desktop system. At least, I haven't seen one in a few year that didn't. So with these, you need to hunt down and open a terminal.

Once the terminal comes up, you su (super user) yourself. It really doesn't stand for super user, it's actually Switch User, but once it defaults to root, it came to be known as super user. And once you are the root user, then you can switch to being any body else, even without a password. But that's not our little trick here, that's the hard way of doing things. (You'll see why this feature is important later, when I talk about SQL setup, in another article).

Part of GNU package of utilities, is passwd program. Which isn't all that strict, as compared to the graphic tools inside Gnome.

So, to change my password to just a single letter 'a' (extremely illegal- snicker, snicker!) we would do this:
# passwd randy
Enter new password: a
Too short: this is not a recommended legal password!!!
Enter again: a

Database updated!

#

...or something like that. It sure gives you every idea that it's not going to do this, but guess what- it did! My password would now be 'a'. Now, how cool is that?

Good Password Test This website will help you make harder to crack passwords, in a very interactive way. It's very good at teaching you what a hard password is- but the danger in too complex is always forgetting it.

Welcome aboard, Linux newbie or old hack.

Hello there,
welcome to the Penguin Petting Zoo. No sorry, this is not Animal Planet. This is a blog about adventuring out of the bounds of Windows, mostly with Linux once they are so readily available. This is kind of a field guide, to tame the wild penguin into a meek petting zoo creature, that even you can handle (no offense intended, of coarse).

We sure don't want this to be dumbed down too much, but we sure don't want it to be burdened brain-bending hierarchy tech jargon, either. A simple guild for the common man, wanting explore the world outside of Windows, without getting bit, gored, or impaled.

One of the problems I had adjusting, when I first started down this road, was too many things at once being thrown at you. For example there's like, at least 30 services for each of these distributions that you can active and configure to run on boot. It's a lot like; "You should have spent two years, studying the history of Tech-innovations, before you got here, buckaroo!" Yeah right! You know some of us, will just dive right in, and see where the current takes us. And that's who this blog is for.

My favorite annoyance was articles about recompiling your Kernel. Yeah right, not something I even have the slightest interest in doing- EVER! Even as a professional programmer. I'll wait and download somebody elses, thank you very much. Calculated in Man-Months, it would take $1.14 Billion USD to reproduce the whole thing from scratch in 2006. I don't have enough extra time to become that kind of expert. And that's way too deep into the pool for any beginner.

This is not an ANTI-WINDOWS blog, either. There will be no Windows Smashing or Bashing here! This is about surviving that change of data platform, not about looking back, and casting stones.

This blog however, is not just about Linux. It's about all the Unix alternatives to DOS, including BSD. Some of us have been around so long, we even remember CPM operating systems. But this is not a guide for the old hacks. It's for the modern explorer, trying to figure out, how to make himself at home in this new world.

The point here is just to draw simple road maps, of how things work inside Unix. This is not a deep insider's guide anything. It's far more pedestrian; there it is, get it, use it, make it your own.

Please pardon me for a while. This is like version 0.1 for the next few weeks.

Looking at the way Google's BLOGGER works, how we label things (keywords) are going to be very important to navigating around here. For general nontechnical information, and summaries, I think the keyword should be "introduction". For example, you take this article, find it's labels on the bottom, and press Introduction, and Blogger will filter a list of only article that include that Label. "desktop" might be a good keyword for articles about Gnome and KDE. "networking" for SAMBA and FTP, etc.