devnet, Author at Yet Another Linux Blog

The Linux Printer Driver Online Petition

I’ve had it! I’ve been locked in for the last time. No longer will I sit idle and allow choices to be made FOR me. I make the choices around here. When I’m in the market for a printer, I don’t want to have to think about which one to get. I want to be able to just go out, browse, pick one, and bring it home. Everything should just work right out of the box right? Wrong! You have to check the Linuxprinting.org Printer Database just to list out printers that you’re allowed to buy…that is, if you want them to work with Linux. I say this is a crock. I say it is a sham. There are more than one operating system on the market, and it is high time that companies…large companies…start to understand this.

You’ve heard it all before I’m sure. My thoughts on this are no where near unique. However, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this. Having been involved with a couple of new user friendly distros of Linux lately, I can assure you that printing is one of the main disqualifiers of Linux converts. It is VERY frustrating for a new user to not get that $200 CANON computer they just bought up and running with Linux when there is no driver for it. In a sense, Canon is dictating what operating system that person must run! To me, this isn’t supportive of capitalism…it locks you into a certain OS. When was the last time you were locked into thinking a certain way and acting a certain way and having choices made for you? The only thing that comes to mind is McCarthism of the 1950’s…and I don’t think that’s a hugely positive stain from America’s sordid past.

How can we remedy this? Perhaps we’re barking up the wrong tree writing emails and letters to the companies. Most of the letters I’ve written fall on deaf ears. The thing that these companies forget is that WE are the consumers…therefore, WE dictate the rise and fall of the market. WE push a product or pull it. Sure, they advertise like hell and try to sway us this way or that…but the ultimate choice lies with US…you and I. The ball is in our court.

Therefore, instead of just writing these emails and letters, perhaps a different type of action can be taken. An online petition.

Let’s see what we can do to shake these manufacturers up. Let’s start a petition where we can each vote and generically address ALL manufacturers and let them know that we won’t take it anymore! Let’s collect as many signatures as we can and show them that Linux is no longer a small player in the market. Let’s force these guys into accepting their responsibility to provide us with a product that works REGARDLESS OF WHAT OS WE CHOOSE. Is anyone with me? If so, drop by the online petition I started today and add your name to the listing. Together, we can make a difference (corny I know…but true). Strength is in numbers. Let’s show them how strong we are.

After signing this petition, spread the word to everyone you know. Emails, links to this article, links to the petition, call people on the phone, snail mail, telegram, morse code, and smoke signal to everyone and anyone you can think of to get support for this. Let’s kick these manufacturers in the proverbial crotch. When the petition hits a mark of approximately 5,000 signatures…I’d say it would be a good time to start sending emails and letters to our printer manufacturers and let them know about our little petition. Perhaps you’re thinking that companies won’t repsond to these things…but rest assured, CNN has responded to these petitions before with apologies for their faulty action…so a printer manufacturer isn’t a far stretch. Spread the word! Let’s make this count!

Visit the online petition and cast your vote!

Animosity Unfounded

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” Marcel Proust

NOTE: This post is in responses of criticisms that have arrived after the posting of an Ubuntu review by a new Linux user in our “Reviews” section.

I figured that I’d have to do something like this. Too many it seems look upon this experiment as “Just another Review” without truly figuring out what it is about. They say things like “just open a shell and do this” or “use synaptic/kpackage and install this” or “use the update client” or “how can you compare this to windows” without any understanding the scope and goals at all. They speak their mind without first understanding what it is that they are speaking on. To me, this is ignorance and looking at things in the same old way instead of with new eyes. However, this isn’t the only problem that is evident.

There are so many out there that empathize so much with a Linux distro that they feel someone is personally attacking them when their distro is trounced in a review…but also because Linux seems to have taken on a social stigma that makes it self defeating. That is, if you are inside of the ‘movement’ and decide to constructively criticize an issue in Linux…you are completely sold out by the movement you were so set on defending or helping. You are sold without a single consideration. Look at RMS…he’s been sold out as a lunatic by half of the world despite being the most clear and unwavering voice on his subject. But this lil rant isn’t about RMS…it’s about what happened when my wife reviewed, and trounced Ubuntu…because it didn’t suit her needs as a new Linux user. Things need to be said…because it is obvious that no one is getting it…and by IT I mean the whole point to the experiment and all of the reviews.

By some of the responses, it is obvious that some haven’t read all of the reviews nor the original intent of this experiment. If you haven’t, before you comment further…go back and read each and every entry under the section “Reviews” because ignorance has no place in this discussion. In order to appreciate what we were trying to accomplish, do you research. Do not speak with authority on that which you do not know.

Secondly, do not bring the GPL, freedom of speech, or anything else GNU/licensing/copyright into this experiment….it never had a place before in any other review (before ubuntu) and please do not have the audacity to bring it into the foray now. It also has no place in this experiment. This is not an experiment that has been done to debate the nuances of Free Software, the OSI, the GPL, or other such nonsense.

I say nonsense because this review is about Desktop environments of Linux. It would be asinine to not discuss how they compare to windows because windows is the de facto standard. Trying to discuss the Linux Desktop without comparing it to windows will not happen no matter how hard we want to pretend it won’t.

We can’t say Linux is better than Windows when it suits us (when we’re bragging or showing off to our friends) and then pull that card when it comes to a review. That is bias and bias has no place in this review. Mrs.D had an overwhelming task ahead of her and she trudged on and stayed fresh as she could. Did she do a good job? I believe she did.

We need to shake the mindset of the old developer who develops linux for his friends and users and start to develop Linux for EVERYONE. New users are a place that Linux has never been strong in…but as we see with this experiment, times are changing.

If one Linux distro includes mp3 support…then all can. No excuses. It doesn’t even matter for licensing. Do you think PCLinuxOS isn’t sold overseas? SimplyMEPIS? Look again. Tout your licenses all you want…but they mean squat to the end user. The end user just wants something that works. They don’t want to get into the whole debate of free vs. proprietary…they want things just to work. We need to make it work for them. We need to stop squabbling because someone trounced your favorite distro and grow up.

Continue reading “Animosity Unfounded”

Experiment: Update – Installed Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary

Last night, Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary went on the old experimental computer. There was a bit of trouble with this and I won’t go into details on it (Per request, I’ll let Mrs.Devnet detail this with her review) but after getting things up and running, everything works fine. Look for a final rating for this one sometime next weekend. Mrs.Devnet really digs the look of Gnome…so Ubuntu may have a feather in its hat there.

After finding out the 2 highest rated distros…we’ll go through and review each of them again pitting them against each other using an Advantage and Disadvantage rating system. For instance, hypothetical situation: Red Hat beats SuSe on the area of multimedia…We’d give RH the advantage. So that’s how things will be rated. After that, the winner will be crowned in a huge picture filled final article.

I’ll also have a Q&A session with Mrs.Devnet on where she thinks the distros that didn’t win can improve the most…and we’ll talk about each one specifically.

Then…I myself will take an in depth look at the winner and the runner up and hit some areas that more experienced users might be concerned with. This will be a separate review as well. I’ll also post a ’roundup’ of all the reviews…really, just a single entry with all the links to the distros and their final ratings.

Last but not least, we’ll have some cool badges for display that link back to the crowned winner review. Some examples of the badges might look like this (I’m terrible at graphics…so if there are any artists out there that would like to lend their talents…please feel free to contact me):

So, lot’s on the horizon…stay tuned and thanks for reading. Suggestions? Please post away and let me know what is on your mind!

Making sendmail a better place

Recently, I’ve had a rash of both [SPAM] and hacking attempts at the site. With this being the case, my intrusion detection system has been working overtime. Something I forgot to do though was to forward all system mail to my main email and user account. So I had to read 5 different email accounts in order to get ‘the whole picture’ To combat this, a very nice little trick with sendmail/procmail can come into play and allow forwarding of all email to the correct box. Very handy…especially if you have rootkit detection software installed such as rootkithunter which is a handy program to alert you to hacker attempts. So this entry will be dedicated to some handy sendmail tips. Most of these tips will apply at a server level…but some can be adapted to desktop. To see the full list of tips, hop into the forum and check them out. Registration isn’t required but would be nice 🙂 (check out the navigation pane at the top of this blog for registration/login links). If you have any of your own tips, go ahead and post them in the forum while you’re there!

Sendmail tips and tricks

Are too Many Licenses a Bad Thing?

“One country . . . one ideology, one system is not sufficient. It is helpful to have a variety of different approaches . . . We can then make a joint effort to solve the problems of the whole of humankind.” Dalai Lama

Open source and Linux is currently at the forefront of the new OSI Licensing Process and the GPL version 3. This usually would boil down to nothing for me and most likely boils down to nothing for most end users. However, in the cases of both of these ‘improvements,’ there are alternative motives. Don’t fool yourself into believing that all intentions of the OSI is to make Joe Common and his laptop full of Linux happy. While they may have Joe’s best interests in mind…they have his pot on the backburner while the new Teflon coated enterprise pot is heating up nicely on the front one.

You’ve heard me talk about this before in a couple of articles [1] [2] that attempt (albeit, my first attempt so please be kind 🙂 ) to address the issues that come into play when businesses and corporations assert their influence into open source communities and projects. Once again, I feel that not enough people are looking at the whole picture. Not to say that I have any ability to understand anything better than others; just that I make a consorted effort to always look at things in 3-5 different ways (leftover habit from college philosophy class).

What do I have a problem with this time? Let’s start with the OSI wanting to ‘trim the fat’ and drop or de-emphasize licenses. Why do we need this? Intel seems to think that it is needed and the community seems to think that there are too many licenses also. Why too many? Who says that this is needed? Can fewer licenses even be feasible?

I don’t think the OSI is actually thinking about things…they’re listening too hard to businesses and enterprise to be thinking. They’re listening to these enterprises and large businesses whine about having to hire X number of lawyers to sift through licenses to make sure that they know what they have to do in order to use the code. Notice I put emphasis on what “they” have to do i.e. the business or corporation. My reasoning lies in the fact that, by nature, a business wants to do as little work as possible to A) save money while at the same time they want to B) save time. In this case, they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the benefit of few licenses to sift through and they want the OSI to do it for them…and for free. What’s the best way to do this? Have a keynote speaker (HP’s Martin Fink) from a company that is Linux-friendly (HP) give a call-to-arms at Linuxworld.

Continue reading “Are too Many Licenses a Bad Thing?”

Experiment: Update Fedora Core 4 Test 1

Fedora Core 4 Test 1 went on the test machine 2 days ago. However, mrs.devnet has done little testing as of yet. Real life issues have taken over. For those that don’t know…I’m currently active duty military and am separating from the service this month. As you probably could guess, this means we’ll be moving soon as well as changing employers. Mrs.devent has been furiously planning our move whilst I am looking for employment in the Richmond, VA – Washington, DC area. So there hasn’t been a ton of development on the experiment. I have spoken to her and she promises action on the last two distributions…FC4 test 1 and Ubuntu-current…within the next week. Sorry for our readers…but of course, family will come first. So expect Fedora Core 4 Test 1 to post sometime this next weekend and Ubuntu the following week. Of course, as promised, we’ll take another look at the top 2 and pit them head-to-head against one another. Then we’ll crown the winner. Thus far, PCLinuxOS is in the lead with 10 out of 10 points awarded and SimplyMEPIS is right behind with 8 out of 10. Stay tuned this weekend for mrs.devnet’s review.

On an positive note for the site, I’ll be going hosted soon. I host this webpage on my own server at home and we’ve been getting many hits on the site which taxes my whole entire connection (time warner cable). To combat this, I am purchasing a domain and webhost plan. Look for those changes to happen in May. There will be little if any downtime…just enough for the nameservers to change over. Thanks again for reading!