Sean’s Blog

I finally got rid of the little Dell 720 printer I’ve been using.  It did kind of a crappy job, was slow and the ink ran out fast and was expensive.  So the other day I boght a big whopping multi function laser printer from Brother.

Brother actually supports Linux, so we can get the drivers which is nice.

The scanner setup was easy as well and I have included it at the bottom.

When you install your 7420, Hardy will detect it and set it up with the wrong printer drivers.

All you need to do for it to work correctly is got to Brother’s web site and download the Linux drivers.

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This week I went ahead and installed Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop and am generally pretty happy with it. As usual the install was painless quick from the upgrade button on the Update manager. I have been holding off on installing on my desktop because I want to make sure everything is running smoothly before I do a full switch.

One of my grips though is why Firefox 3 beta 5 was included. I like it and it seems to be pretty stable, but several of my plugins don’t work. Google notebook appears to work, but when you try to open it, it just pops open a new blank window. Google Gears is not yet supported in FF3. Several days ago the del.icio.us plugin was upgraded to work at least.

Here are a couple tips that I found useful doing this install:

• If you get a message when you try to run something through wine that says “failed to reserve range: xxx-xxx” try following the instructions here. Fixed it for me.
• Since I use Wine a lot, and by default wine is in a hidden folder (.wine) you can create a link for easier access. At the terminal in your home directory simply type “ln -s .wine wine” (without the quotes) and the will create a link to the folder that you can access without unhiding all directories.

I’ve never been a big fan of ITunes. When I first permanently switched over to Linux about a year ago, I had a bit of a quandary. Itunes wasn’t supported (although I believe it is now via Wine)and the IPod utilities that I was aware of just really weren’t appealing to me. GTKPod was kind of ugly and kludgy, but it worked for a little while. Then I ran across Rockbox.

RockBox isn’t an Itunes replacement, it’s a replacement for the Ipod firmware. What this means is that when your Ipod starts up, it loads a program that is basically a little operating system, which plays the songs, displays stuff on the screen, handles the click wheel, and all that other good stuff. Rockbox replaces that.

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A while ago, I wrote up a piece on how to install a Dell 720 Printer in Ubuntu. Last weekend, after a reinstall of Linux, I found my printer didn’t work. “No problem”, I thought, “I’ll just follow my own tutorial”. To my absolute horror, when I tried to do it, it didn’t work. So I started sifting through the message boards, and found alot of old info that didn’t help. Finally, I was able to get everything squared away, so without further ado, here is the updated and correct Howto for installing a Dell 720 Photo Printer under Ubuntu 7.10.

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Last weekend, I reinstalled my Ubuntu desktop. It had been running well for almost a year, but I had made so many changes that i though it was time to clear out some of the cruft. i used to religiously reinstall Windows every 6 months for the same reason.

Now I know that most of the problems I was having (wireless was flaky, several services started to fail unexpectedly) were fixable with some work, which is one of the great things about Linux. But sometimes giving it a clean wipe can make life alot easier. While doing this, I put together some tips for reinstalling Linux. This is not another hand holding Linux install walk through, but pointers for those who have the basics down.

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This is an older post I had written, but as far as I can tell it is still the case in Ubuntu 7.10.

A couple weeks while ago i decided to upgrade my kernel to the most current stable version (2.6.21.5). Previously I had been using the kernel that comes with Feisty by default (2.6.20 I believe). Upgrading and installation was no problem (instructions can be found here). The problem wasn’t readily apparent until afterwards.

I use an ATI graphics card, and need to use the ATI driver with the Restricted Driver Manager. The problem is that the Restricted Driver Manager seems to require the 2.6.20 version of the kernel and was not able to run or load any driver with the new kernel. I had to fall back to the default graphics driver which slowed some things down considerably.

After some looking, I was unable to find a way to update the RDM or upgrade it, and ended up backing out of the new kernel to the default. At that point, everything worked fine again. I’ve been unable to find anyway to remedy this and if anybody knows definitely let me know.

While I was setting up Timevault, I noticed something really weird. When I added a application to start on login (System->Preferences->Sessions), it showed up as added, but was gone after I logged out and logged back in.

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* I’ve updated this with a better, more simple setup.  Click here to go to it.* 

I’ve finally installed my printer under linux. There didn’t seem to be any specific tutorials for this printer (probably because it is a rebranded Lexmark). I did find a tutorial that got me most of the way there, so I figured I would share how I did it.

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One of the few windows programs that I really miss since I switched over to Ubuntu is IrfanView. I’ve yet to find anything that works as well as a general purpose image viewer and lightweight editor. Usually wine would take care of that, but it didn’t seem to install.

Once I sat down and looked at the output of the errors though, it was pretty apparent that it was just missing a library called mfc42.dll. A quick google search for the missing library and then dropping it into ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/ and the program installed and ran without a hitch.

I’ve never been a big fan of RhythmBox, the default Ipod management software in Ubuntu. I was getting tired of it popping up every time I plugged in my Ipod. Changing it is pretty simple. I wanted Exaile to start whenever I plugged in the ipod.

The way to do this is go to System->Preferences->Removable Drives and Media. Then just add the program under the Multimedia Tab where it says Portable Music Players.