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All in one

Mini Post - Printers and Scanners

After half an hour of Googling and grumbling, fruitlessly trying to get my Epson Stylus DX8400 to scan to my netbook, I came a across a small goldmine of Epson drivers and software for Linux. If you have a photo printer or scanner and have yet to find a driver to get it to talk to your Linux (or other operating system) computer, have a look through.

http://avasys.jp/eng/linux_driver/

There are RPMs and .deb packages available as well as source files so its well worth trying to save yourself some trouble and having a look here if you get stuck.

Happy printing/scanning.

Linux rebirth

After the best part of 6 months without a post, I am happy to report that my life in Linux has undergone some what of a regeneration. Like Dr Who I am going to take on a new shape and face some new foes, as well as some old ones I'm sure. This new era began around a month ago when I was contacted by a recruitment company who had previously arranged an interview for me for a help desk role which, sadly I was unsuccessful for. However, they kept my details and a slightly different role had arisen as a trainee systems administrator for the web hosting arm of a media company. Long story short, I went for it, got offered the job that day and have spent the last 10 days on a crash course system administration journey. The best part of it all? I am now working almost exclusively in Linux in one form or another. Fedora, Red Hat and Centos are all used for servers and desktop machines and my knowledge has been truly tested as a lot of the work is done through the command line.

Fedora 15 is installed on the computer I am using day to day and I have to admit that I have been very impressed with the stability and flexibility of the system as a whole. Not only that, the KDE environment that I am using does provide some very helpful utilities and good looking effects. One of my favourite programs is Kjots which was introduced to me by a very knowledgeable system administrator and friend who told me at the time that I would soon find it invaluable. He was not wrong. It is like a virtual notepad but enables you to keep several notebooks for different topics and title pages, highlight sections and saves it all for you automatically. Another useful tip in Fedora (and possibly other Linux systems - I don't have any others to test right now) is to highlight some text that you want and then click your mouse-wheel where you want to post it. Like copy and paste but just a highlight and drop. Handy for remembering lines of commands when skipping through a file system.

LibreOffice has replaced OpenOffice for reasons that I am not going to go into. They are more or less like for like and Libre hasn't faltered for anything I have needed so far. Another useful utility is Knotes which places "post-it" style notes on your desktop to get you to remember to buy milk or restart your machine. You can send them to other systems on your network, set alarms, print them and email them to name but a few functions.

I found the system settings utility a bit cumbersome at times but once you work out where the settings you want are hidden it can be easier to navigate with the search box provided. Compatibility with Firefox, Thunderbird and Dropbox help you to feel quite at home and Chrome can also be installed although I have yet to get round to this.

The desktop effects give the whole thing a nice shiny veneer so my advice would be if you can spare the processing power, enable them and have a play. Wobbly windows is my personal favourite.

I will be reporting back over the next few weeks with some more helpful hints as well as some Linux system reviews if I can squeeze them in. In the meantime, happy hunting.

The iPhone Verdict + Ubuntu 10.10

Having been very kindly loaned an iPhone for a week, I have been impressed by many of its features but I remain sceptical of certain aspects and will be returning it to its original owner. iTunes remains one of my biggest hang-ups about all Apple products and the inability of the creators to see that not everyone will want to use one piece of software for all their media needs. Being unable to use simple drag and drop out of the box is a big loss and the past week has only cemented my Hero's place in my pocket.
After days of updating, package downloading and other fiddling, I am sad to say that I have been unsuccessful in my quest to get the iPhone to talk to a Linux system. Linux Mint simply wouldn't recognise that I had even plugged anything in to any "known working" USB ports and even when I retreated to the relative safety of Ubuntu, there were still some connection issues using the iPhone/iPod friendly 10.10 Maverick Meerkat release. There are several articles on the Ubuntu website about getting your iPhone working with various media players but even after sifting through the appropriate packages and updating the system over and over again, I still had no joy. Whether you can get this working or not, it isn't exactly plug and play and there isn't anyone stepping forward from Apple with an answer. If you don't want to use/cant use iTunes, they don't want to know.

On the up side, this test has given me the chance to look at the latest release of Ubuntu (10.10) and I have to say that I am impressed. The Live CD booted quickly and the desktop looks very smooth and professional. Not massively different to previous versions, but there have been some small improvements. When dropped into my usual Windows laptop, it discovered and configured all the hardware and was connected to the Internet in no time. Its also very sociable with the ability to incorporate your MSN or Facebook chat into your desktop via the Ubuntu button in the top right of the desktop.

The road test on the new Ubuntu continues and I will soon be venturing into the world of the netbook which will be exclusively Linux. But which one?

Dear Apple. I own two computers. What's the beef?

Day two of iPhone testing comes in two sections: Sync with a second computer and use an iPhone on Linux. Both tasks are somewhat achievable with my current phone using HTC sync on Windows machines and mounting the phone memory and memory card as removable devices in Linux. I still have yet to master contacts and calendar syncing to a phone in Linux but I can at least exchange music, photos and videos between the phone and computer.

Having installed iTunes on my home (Windows) computer, I plugged in the phone and it was discovered without a problem. Going into the sync screen was where the problems started. If I navigated to the "apps" tab and ticked the box to sync these in the next sync. A synchronisation anywhere else would involve two way traffic. Clearly not the case here as the apps I had downloaded at work and put onto the phone would be deleted if I synced the phone away from the work computer. The same story on the photos, music, ringtones, contacts, calendar and pretty much anything else you might need to share between two computers. Why would you keep your whole music collection at work and why would you keep your work calendar and contacts at home? Is it so unbelievable in the 21st century that people might have more than one computer?

Clearly you can get around this by syncing only certain things on certain machines. For example, contacts and calendar at home and music and photos at work. But for me, if you make a phone that is as good as the iPhone is, why wouldn't you allow people to sync their files without the risk of deleting everything each time? You also cant access the phone via My Computer, as I guess this would be a way around having to use iTunes. Being able to simply drag and drop file on the Hero is one of the most useful features as my phone has doubled up as an emergency makeshift flash drive on more than one occasion. So continues my severe disliking of iTunes.

The second section of testing, after several botched attempts, has been postponed to the weekend when I have more time to fiddle repositories and software versions. I am reliably informed by the Ubuntu website that the 10.10 release is fully compatible with iProducts but since I stopped using Ubuntu at version 10.04 I didn't have an up to date system to test on. I will report back when success has been achieved.

Back on the net and out of the comfort zone

After a few months of limited Internet access and other general obstacles, I am returning to the blogosphere with a small dose of real world testing. Before you read on I have a small confession, this entry is only very loosely Linux based. Allow me to explain;

Ever since the release of the first iPhone, I have had a real issue with the apparent need to tether yourself to one computer and one iTunes account. ITunes remains one of my least favourite pieces of software to date. Its bulky, slow, unintuitive and unfortunately, it is one of only a few ways to put anything on your Apple product. For the Linux users out there, iTunes is not really an option but there are some options according my Googling results and I will be giving these a once over later this week. In the meantime, having steered clear of the iPhone for many years due to my disliking of iTunes, I thought it would be very closed minded of me to form a negative opinion of these products without having actually used one in the real world and giving it a chance to prove its worth. Luckily my boss had a spare iPhone 3G in stock following an upgrade so over the next week I will be putting my HTC Hero to one side and going over to the dark side. Now, as for a Linux link, the iPhone's IOS is loosely based around Mac OS X which is a type of Unix-like operating system, just like any Linux distro. So whilst Mac OS X and IOS are not strictly open-source, they do share some similarities with Linux. Plus it gives me a chance to compare this to Android which is based around a modified Linux system and at the same time I can see if it is possible to use your iPhone on a Linux operating system.

Initial Impressions: Everything about the iPhone is designed to be smooth, from the feel of the handset to the transitions and menu navigation. I am not breaking any ground here, this particular model has been around for many years and has been reviewed billions of times. And yet, despite its age, it still feels modern and quick enough to handle new apps and tasks. I think this is a good illustration of the fact that Apple had this kind of handset nailed at an early stage and only recently have some of the other smartphone players begun to give it a good run for its money (HTC Desire HD, Samsung Galaxy S and Google Nexus S to name but a few). I don't think I could ever argue that this is not a good phone. 24 hours into full use and I have been impressed. It is as easy to use as I have always been told and is well up to any task that I have been able to throw at it so far.

Gripes: iTunes! First and foremost, you cant install iTunes on Linux. No help from the guys at Apple here, just a few web solutions about running it in WINE, which isn't ideal. As a result, I installed on my work computer. It took a little while to install and then went about converting all of my media files which also took a while. Once all that was done and I plugged in the phone, I then had to set about getting the sync organised with what I did and didn't want to go on my iPhone. For the sake of time, I un-ticked all my music, chose a couple of artists on the music tab and just told it to get my contacts from Outlook as well as the calendar. All fine so far.

The next gripe comes in the form of the cable. Or to be specific, the plug and ports that Apple use. I have taken my Hero to peoples houses who own a Blackberry or a sat-nav that have the same charger or USB cable and have been able to charge my phone. If I ever made a permanent swap to an "i-product", I would probably take a cable or charger with me everywhere because even though they are popular, I wouldn't like to assume that I could get the right cable wherever I am. As a side note, the battery is also pretty poor but I am putting that down to the age of the handset as well as some heavy app usage in the last day or so.

I was going to run a test to see what happened when I plugged the phone into another Windows computer with iTunes on after work today, but neglected to bring the i-cable home with me so that test will have to wait. I have been informed by some that a sync is possible on another computer but you have to choose different things to sync e.g: Contacts and calendar from work PC and Music from home PC. This remains to be seen.

In the meantime, the test continues. Its good, but not flawless...

"Mint to Xbox... come in Xbox"

Having installed a fresh new hard drive, getting Mint up and running and getting my media files back on place, I felt it was time to get some other members of the tech household involved. An Xbox 360 (or a Playstation 3 for that matter) can be used to stream your music, photos and videos to your TV via your home network. This can be achieved via your wireless Internet connection or via a wired Ethernet network and even over your home's power lines if you have the correct gear. The Xbox has been a bit redundant lately as my free time that can be spent loafing on the sofa giving the thumbs a good workout has been decreasing for some time. So to make it feel loved again, I have hooked it up to the network, given the software an update and relatively simply hooked it up to a Windows Media Centre capable laptop as an extender. Now, I know that Windows doesn't usually feature in this blog however, Xbox is Microsoft's baby and as a result the compatibility with Windows computers and Media Centre is not something that you can avoid. In about 15 minutes, I was playing a video that was stored on a Windows Laptop on my living room TV. This involved generating a code on the Xbox and pumping that into Media Centre as an extender. More or less the whole process. 15 is generous as I spent a few minutes configuring the sharing in Windows 7's Homegroup feature.

The idea here is that the Windows machine gives me a benchmark for the Linux equivalents on ease of set-up and compatibility. There are a wealth of articles out there on streaming to your console and I have plumped to test some of the popular ones, starting with XBMC. Actually that is a slight lie, I started by seeing if I would be able to access a folder that I share over the network between Mint and Windows using a simple Samba Server utility. This did not work and although I can happily share from computer to computer, the Xbox couldn’t quite handle this. And so we turn to XBMC.

XBMC (formerly known as Xbox Media Centre – see what they've done there!) is an Open-Source utility that as well as running on Linux, can also be used on MacOS and Windows as well as having its own Linux Distribution version so you can install it on a purely media computer or run it from a Live CD. So pretty much anyone, anywhere can use XBMC no matter their situation. It is very versatile and can handle a huge range of media types and formats. You can get it here www.xbmc.org by heading to the downloads then Linux and following the instructions for Ubuntu. Leave the “compile from source” option to those with the knowledge and time to do so. I wont copy the instructions over as they are super easy to follow and involve 4 or 5 terminal commands to get up and running. Installation is quick and easy – a good start.

Open up your menu and fire up XBMC and you are greeted with a nice media centre menu which is easy to navigate with just a keyboard but mouse can also be used. As a test I navigated to where my videos are kept and hit play. No problems here although sound seemed to be slightly ahead of the video. Tried pausing and restarting but no dice. None the less, I powered up the Xbox and it couldn't find anything. Back to the XBMC settings and had to enable the “share video and music using UPnP” option in the Network options under the System menu. Back to the Xbox and hey presto, XBMC server shows up but after selecting that, no media files show up in the next screen. Back to XBMC again and after right clicking a video file and selecting “Manually add to library”, it then shows up on the Xbox. Took a few seconds for the video to start playing but there was no loss in picture quality and the sound problem didn’t seem to be showing here. Clearly this is an issue on the computer end, and after a bit of Googling this was more or less confirmed as I had assumed as an issue with the graphics card. After trying a few fixes and loosing patience, I took the fact that I could stream to the Xbox as a victory and set out in search of an alternative. Before we leave here though, worth bearing in mind that XBMC has to be running on the computer you are streaming from. This means that you not only need to go and manually tun the computer on but have to boot up and start XBMC. Or leave it on and running all the time!

PS3 Media Server was the next victim, despite the name! A bit of preparation work involved but I am happy to say another easy and quick set-up. Go to your main menu and load up Package Manager. You will need to install the packages for ffmpeg, mplayer and mencoder. This is as easy as typing their name in the search box and ticking Install then apply. Head over to http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com and download the latest version. You need to extract the files to an appropriate location, (the Home\Downloads or \Documents folders will do) and then double click PMS.sh. You then get the option to Run in Terminal, Display, Cancel or Run, the last of which is the good option here. The status window greets you and will have a big warning triangle if you are using an Xbox like me. This is only because you aren’t using a Playstation so nothing to worry about. In the tabs across the top there is an option for Navigation/Share Settings which you need to go into and add the folders you want to share. After this you will need to hit the Restart HTTP Server button in the middle of the top menu and this is the computer side done. The Xbox found the server no problems and after a few loading screens between navigation pages I was able to play the videos with no problems at all. Even better was the fact that you can then close the PMS window on your Linux machine and it will keep running in the background. All you need to do now is go to your main menu, view all programs and go to Startup Applications and manually add PMS.sh to run at startup. Now all you need is to switch on, log in if required and you are away. PS3 seems to run efficiently and is easy to install and get working, which are all good things for Linux novices.

The third option that I had planned to test was a program called Fuppes, however after an hour of failed installations, errors and generally getting quite hacked off with the whole thing, I have decided that if it cant be installed that easily then it cant make the list. I apologise in advance to all who use Fuppes without a problem as most forums seem to say that it is OK. Several attempts in different directories and after installing and reinstalling the necessary packages it refused to work so I am happy to put this one down as a win for Linux over my knowledge. I have decided to console myself by watching a film via PS3 with a smug “In your face Fuppes” look on my face.

All in all, PS3 was easy to install, use and configure so it has earned its place on my Mint system and I hope it is the beginning of a glittering streaming partnership with the Xbox.

Until next time, Happy Linuxing.