Linux, some ideas and tips and questions and tricks.

Straight_Man

I will be posting things I learn here in hopes of helping others, and posting some questions here also, in hopes of getting hints or answers.

Straight_Man

Printing with a USB printer, setup:

I have noted of late that some distros are implementing cups-gutenprint. This is quite nice for those of us with inkjet USB printers. BUT, some distros make you do things they do NOT document to get printing working. So, some things to try that might seem to be hearkening back to older Windows days - that I tried and got printing working with:

1. SEARCH for your printer when setting up a new printer. If nothing happens, no printer found, try unplugging the printer's USB cable from the USB port it is plugged into and then plug it back in WHILE SEARCHING. This sometimes works.

What is happening if it works:

Printer port got hung during kernel initial setup, then printer locked. Unplugging printer's USB cord (really, EITHER end should work) and then plugging it back in causes printer to re-initialize on hot-plug and be responsive again and thus appear to searcher.

Why searching works - to CUPS(Common Unix Printer Server), (which is a software based server for printing management) the computer it is installed in and is running in is now a server on the network. Thus, only printers hooked up with LP socket hookups are still considered local. USB printers are ALL network printers these days as far as CUPS, Ghostprint, and Gutenprint (German for Good Print) are concerned. So, searching the network polls USB on all computers(including the local one) on network for printers available for use.

2. Leave printer on same USB port or you will be breaking the validity of the printer's URI/URL pathing, which is printer/USB port specific. If you change ports for printer with Linux, sometimes(frequently) you have to re-setup printer. It's a Linux thing, Windows re-polls USB on boot for USB changes(and sets up URIs blind to user), and uses hot-plug(live detect of USB change and URI re-setup) a lot.

3. USB in Linux is treated like an iSCSI sub-bus (kinda developed that way because SCSI is a semi-hot-plug bus (slow hotplug, but real hotplug in the older sense)). So, Linux earlier on recognized USB storage and scanners (some very early scanners used SCSI data bussing).

Merry Christmas to those with Linux printer problems.

Straight_Man

This printer stuff only applies to some of the distros, Fedora 16 found the printer fine and had pre-installed the CUPS-Gutenprint set so all it needed was to install the Epson printing task handler to handle printing tasks.

Straight_Man

To go on and change subtopics a bit - does anyone know why Linux speaks of 24 bit color and 30 bit color, and 32 bit color (true 32 bit) is mostly only used in Windows parlance???