Before you blame the Equipment Revisited!

It seems that my analysis of my printer problems may have been flawed!

A few days ago I had six documents and three labels to print: all needed to be produced in a rush. Now, call me a cynic, but I can always guarantee that when I'm in a hurry, the bugs and problems will manifest themselves. So, urgent job and I can't get the printer to print more than one document at a time (if I can get it to print anything at all). Thinking that I've already solved the problem I try the cable (no joy), so I replace the cable (still no joy), in despair I turn to Google.

It seems that there is a known bug in the Karmic kernel when using the hplib utility for USB printers (it works fine with network printers). The solution turns out to be fairly simple:

• Delete the USB printer from the HP Device Manager
• From the System Menu, select Administration & PrintingSelect Printer from the New drop down menu and the utility will search for available printers.
  
• When the printer dialog box appears, select your printer and then click on the Connection option (rhs)
  
  
• Select, USB
• Click the Forward button and follow the wizard

That's it!

The downside is that I can't use the hp Device Manager to monitor my ink levels or receive status messages: but at least I can print using my hp photosmart 7660 USB printer!

Window Dressing

Here's a tip that I discovered quite by accident:

I have a Logitech DiNovo cordless keyboard attached to my Ubuntu box and, as with most of today's commercially available keyboards, it comes with a Windows Start Key. If you press and hold the key and simultaneously press the tab key, you can scroll between open Windows in much the same way that you can in Microsoft Vista.



Just press the tab key (whilst holding the Start key) to move to the next window.

The Spring Clean and the Wine

Every now and again I'm tempted to have a tidy up: I know that I shouldn't, but I just can't seem to help it.

To help you keep your system at peak running efficiency, Karmic has a Computer Janitor utility (System → Administration → Computer Janitor) which searches your computer and finds all those orphan programs and shared libraries that it thinks that you no longer need. If, like me, you are a trusting soul, the temptation is to simply click the Do Selected Tasks option and think no more about it: however, I urge caution!

This is the second time that I've used the utility only to find subsequently that I couldn't use Wine. I only use Wine to run a single program, Memory-Map and to be honest, it doesn't run particularly well: nonetheless, I have a great wide-screen monitor on my Ubuntu box and it makes for superb viewing of 1:25,000 scale maps. Anyway, long story short: it seemed easier to remove Wine completely and start from scratch than it did to try and repair the damage. I went to the command line and typed:

sudo apt-get remove wine

Typed in my password and waited for the system to do its thing. After removing Wine, I noticed that there was still an entry for the program in the Applications menu although nothing would work when I clicked on the shortcut. It turns out that the standard remove command doesn't remove the Windows applications, you have to remove the ~/wine directory manually.

Open a terminal and type:

rm -rf $HOME/.wine

Once the directory is gone, you can then remove the menu entries and desktop items:

rm -f $HOME/.config/menus/applications-merged/wine*
rm -rf $HOME/.local/share/applications/wine
rm -f $HOME/.local/share/desktop-directories/wine*
rm -f $HOME/.local/share/icons/????_*.xpm

Source: Wine HQ FAQ 5.1

Reinstalling Wine from the Ubuntu software Centre is easy enough and replacing the map viewer from Memory-Map didn't trouble me either but I will think more carefully about spring cleaning in the future!

More Codec Issues

It's funny what you forget when you rebuild your PC. This week I decided to start watching the second series of 24 on DVD. I slipped the first disk into the drive and Movie Player just refused to play!

When I rebuilt the PC, I forgot to install the libdvdcss2 package that allows Ubuntu to play restricted content. Easy enough to fix, open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4

You may also need the dvdspu gstreamer plugin:

sudo apt-get install totem-gstreamer



With the plugins loaded, Movie Player played the first episode but wouldn't give me access to the menu nor allow me to jog to the next chapter. I switched to xine and was good to go.

Karmic Cash

It occurred to me that my output to date might suggest that I am anti-Windows, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I'm quite a fan of Microsoft (or, at least I was) and believe that without Bill Gates computing would remain the purview of corporations and academia.

That said, Microsoft (and the other commercial software vendors) also has its flaws not least the constant and unnecessary product upgrades. My foray into open source has taught me that I can be just as productive as I was in my Windows days but save a small fortune into the bargain. Take a fairly average (non-corporate) project manager's software collection:

	Windows		Ubuntu
Windows 7 (Home Prem/Full)	£149.99	Ubuntu 9.10 LTS	£0.00
Outlook	£99.99	Thunderbird	£0.00
Microsoft Office (Std '07)	£349.99	OpenOffice	£0.00
Microsoft Project (Std '07)	£519.99	OpenProj	£0.00
Microsoft Visio (Std '07)	£229.99	OpenOffice Drawing	£0.00
Internet Explorer	£0.00	Thunderbird	£0.00
Windows Media Player	£0.00	RhythmBox	£0.00
Microsoft Autoroute	£49.99	OpenStreetMap	£0.00
Anti-virus software	c.£50.00	ClamTK Virus Scanner	£0.00

That's a lot of cash!

There are a few caveats:

I know that the OS normally comes bundled with a new PC, but if you want to upgrade it will still cost you money and you're tied to the latest technology. Ubuntu on the other hand runs quite contentedly on a pretty old PC: there are exceptions, as my recent experience with Lucid Lynx demonstrates, but you can run an excellent (and safe) system on a recycled base (saving money & the planet).

I've used Microsoft's Retail List Price and no-one pays full price! However, you will pay quite a lot for most of the more arcane Office products (Project & Visio, especially) and they are not always substantially better than the free alternatives.

Some of the commercial software is just better than the free stuff. Again, I would rate MS Project and Visio as far better products than anything that I've found for free: but the question remains as to whether they are so much better as to justify several hundreds of pounds for each version/upgrade.

There are two other considerations when choosing an operating system: virus infections and footprint. Ubuntu is not as prone to attack as Windows and nor does it need the 16GB of disk space to run!

Do You Scrobble?

One of the fringe benefits of teaching myself Linux by attending the University of Google is that I get to learn all sorts of strange stuff that I didn't know that I didn't know (if you'll excuse the Rumsfeldism). For instance, whilst trying to fix my Zen recently, my research exposed me to the hitherto unknown expression, scobbling.

I know, it sounds like something that you'd catch if you hadn't taken precautions! However, as a verb, it appears to mean collecting data (particularly data regarding someone's taste in music) in order to refine service delivery and/or for social networking purposes. The (rather convoluted) wiki definition goes thus:

To publish one's music-listening habits via software, as counted events when songs or albums are played, to selected internet services in order to track them over time, out of curiosity and/or to make them visible to others.

It seems that it all stems from Last.fm, an Internet radio site that records the details of its listeners' musical tastes to better provide content to its audience.

So, there you have it: when we give up this information willingly it's called freedom (or, scrobbling ;)), if it's taken by stealth, it's called invasion of privacy.

Just trying to learn you all something!

Karma and Zen

Lets' face it, Ubuntu doesn't get everything right and it can even be as bad as Windows at times! OK, I've had one of those weeks: first the printer saga and then Windows nuked my Creative Zen V!

The Zen comes with some Windows sync software which (frankly) is rubbish, but I'm a creature of habit (aka, stupid) and still insist on trying to transfer music to my Zen using Vista. Somehow, connecting my Zen to my Vista machine (something I've done countless times before) triggered some sort of kill command and Windows happily obliged.

Alright, I'm overstating it, but you take the point: when I attached my Zen it was one of my favourite gadgets, when I detached it, it was a brick. It only happened because the postman delivered the new Jackson Browne album yesterday and I wanted to get it straight onto my PMP for those long walks in the Welsh hills.

Fortunately, Google had the solution and, to my palpable relief and benefit to my temper, I was able to revive my Zen. That's the good news!

The bad news is that for some completely insane reason, I decided that Ubuntu must be able to sync my PMP with my music on my network and I spent the next twenty-four hours trying to get it to work. Entertainment is one area of personal computing that I think Windows wins hands-down: leaving aside the (excellent) Windows Media Player, there are all sorts of alternative entertainment packages that beat the Linux offerings into the dust. I'm sorry, but that's just how I see it. That said, I really don't want to be tied to Microsoft just so that I might occasionally update my music, so Ubuntu was going to have to play ball (even if it killed me).

The real irony is, when I plugged my Zen into the USB of my Ubuntu box, Linux saw it immediately and mounted it in Nautilus. Now that's impressive! However, the problem comes with the proprietary formats used by Creative: Ubuntu just can't read them without a little help and you need to install the MTP support packages from Synaptic. Even then, you can't just drag and drop as you would in Windows Media Player because the Zen doesn't add the new files to the library (see the wiki link above for an explanation). I wasn't too phased by this: I still had Rhythmbox to try and, sure enough when I opened Rhythmbox, there was my Zen listed in the side panel waiting patiently for me to do something. Unfortunately, everything I tried to do was fruitless. Dragging tracks to the Zen resulted in the music being added to root and not the Music folder: consequently, the PMP couldn't play them. I tried the command line but with the same result (even using the folder ID numbers rather than, names), I wasted hours trying to get it to work - all to no avail.

So, onto gnomad2. This just didn't see the device at all and I had absolutely no joy in finding a solution. My best guess is that, had I owned a Zen V Plus (rather than the Zen V), I might have made it passed the finishing post, but as it was nothing helped. I even compiled and installed the latest version in the vain hope that it would solve the dreaded "No jukeboxes found on USB bus" error message. The lsusb command listed my Zen, so I know that the USB bus was working ok: but nothing I tried (even a firmware update) would coax gnomad2 to talk to my PMP.

In desperation I finally turned to Amarok. The version from the repository was rubbish: it wouldn't even play music in my Music folder on the PC! It didn't see the Zen (until I realized that I had to unmount (I much prefer "demount", but let's go with the lingo) it first) far less read it. Anyway, as a last resort, I compiled the latest version from source and....

It worked!

I can now send music to my Zen and it loads all the artwork and track listings as it should. It is noteworthy that Amarok still won't play music on my PC, but hey, you can't have everything!

By the way, if you have a bricked Zen, try connecting it to a PC via a USB cable, slide and hold the on switch while you use a pin to reset the device. Worked like a charm for me.