[Wolves] Ubuntu - Flavour of the Month or Year??

[Adam Sweet]

--- Tim Humpherson <tim.humpherson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I acquired another spare Hard Drive and fancied
> having a go with a
> different Linux system.  I already have SuSE 9.2 Pro
> and FC3.  But
> want to try debian-based OS, such as Ubuntu.
> 
> I am aware that SuSE has excellent USB connectivity
> (recognised what's
> plugged in, with most devices - except my webcam,
> unfortunately)..... 
> does Ubuntu offer the same ease of use, ie. would it
> recognise digital
> camera, Canon LiDE30 scanner and also Epson R300?

It's still a text based installer, but easier than
Debian proper. Use the Mandrake installer to partition
your disk if you don't fancy a text based partitioning
tool.

Your scanner is supported completely according to
http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html which is
always the place to look for supported scanners. Xsane
is on the Applications | Graphics menu. Buttons on the
front of the scanner are not guaranteed to work in my
experience, but who needs them?

Your printer is partially supported according to
http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Epson-Stylus_Photo_R300

Sounds like it uses the gimp-print driver.

Quote:

"6-color CMYKcm printing, printing on inkjet-printable
CDs and DVDs possible (not yet supported by
Gimp-Print)"

I think it should do regular printing, but advanced
colour printing won't.

You can check these websites yourself on a regular
basis to see if things improve. Sane is *the* Linux
scanner website and linuxprinting.org is the printer
equivalent.

Different distros all use the same tools so if they
are supported by the above packages, they will be
supported by every distro that uses them.

Ubuntu works in much the same as SuSE with regards to
plugging in devices. SuSE 9.1 was the first time I had
seen a distro automatically detect a device and open
it in the most appropriate application. With kernel
2.6 and the various tools that make uses of it (HAL,
udev etc), this should become common across all
distros. Ubuntu is no different. I remember in
January, Jono was giving me a course in PHP and we
started plugging anything in that we could find and
Ubuntu detected them all. There are always exceptions
of course.

As for your webcam, I have a bit of news...

After a bit of googling, it turns out that outside of
Europe it's known as the Quickcam Orbit. And that made
it easier to find information. Apparently it's
supported under the same pwc driver that my old
Philips webcam uses and my webcam works great.

Details at http://www.saillard.org/linux/pwc/ and
supported cameras at http://tinyurl.com/88zo6

Try it one one of your existing systems. Use a console
window and as root type

modprobe pwc

With a bit of luck it should spring into life allow
you to view the output in either Gnomemeeting or xawtv
if you have it.

If it doesn't work, try it in Ubuntu. Althought
supported for a few years now, Ubuntu is the first
distro to get my webcam working properly. If it still
doesn't work then I can't really help you too much, I
didn't do anything to get it to work. It just worked.
In Ubuntu you won't have to modprobe pwc.

Next step I guess you want to use gnomemeeting to talk
to your MSN Messenger using friends. Can't help you
here either I'm afraid. I've never spoken to anyone
using it. Read the manual, it tells you how to start a
conversation and that it can talk to Netmeeting (not
necessarily Messenger). I've never tried so I don't
know.

Also Gnomemeeting hangs when it tries to detect my NAT
type (a way of using multiple local network addresses
behind a single Internet IP address, this is how most
firewalls and routers work) so I have to kill it, so
have no idea whether I could talk to other
Gnomemeeting or Netmeeting users even if I had someone
to talk to. Should certainly work with your machine
connected directly to the net. If your NAT works, you
may have to open a firewall port - this is covered in
the manual.

Don't know about your digital camera as you don't say
what type it is, but just google for the camera make
and manufacturer and the word linux.

Mine didn't work (Nikon Coolpix something or other),
but I have since installed gtkam and gphoto2 so maybe
it will next time I try. It's not something I know
about to be honest.

Hope thats cheered you up :)

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