10th August 2006

Posted in

Blog :: More Ubuntu

I previously commented on my my new Kubuntu desktop. Since that time I haven't found any signifigant glitches, and have found a few things I really like (Amarok is a really cool music player!) I've also had a friend of mine install Ubuntu on his laptop without any major difficulty. He's a smart guy, but not an IT professional, so I've been impressed that his switch has been so hassle free.  I don't know if Ubuntu is quite yet the proverbial "Linux for your Mom", but it's definitely "Linux for your computer savvy friends".

I have had to continue configuring some things, so I'll keep writing them down as I figure them out. The last thing I did was figure out my printer. The CUPS drivers available for download from Brother had an error message, so I had just installed with the 2060pxlmono driver (I have a 2070N). This worked, but printing seems to have a little delay in it with the 2060 driver; instead of printing in 10 seconds, it takes 20 seconds or so to start printing the first sheet. Searching for "HL2070" had been no help on the Ubuntu forums, but searching for "Brother printer" brought me this howto. Turns out Debian has the startup scripts for the CUPS printer system in /etc/init.d/cupsys instead of /etc/init.d/cups. A quick link to provide the expected location (read the howto for details) and the .debs provided by Brother installed without error. Somewhat irritatingly, however, they install a local (USB) device printer, so printing didn't work despite seeing the printer in my CUPS list. Fortunately by selecting the printer in my list of installed printers under Start -> System Settings -> Printers, I could select the properties tab, scroll down to the "Interface" item, and change it from USB to network. Voila! Printing works with the official drivers!

Update: Wow. IE6, IE5.5, and IE5.0 all installed in one trouble free script. I did a `sudo apt-get wine` and then downloaded the IE's4Linux script available here. I've always had difficulty getting wine to run IE, especially with all the plugins. Now I have 3 different versions with the Flash 9 plugin installed. Of course I'm not going to use IE for everyday browsing! But as a web developer I frequently have to check things out in a variety of browsers, and this lets me do so easily.

Posted on August 10th 2006, 10:24 AM