[geeks] Desktops

[Mike Hebel]

Gregory Leblanc wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 2002-05-09 at 16:51, Mike Hebel wrote:
> > As for the advice.  Choose a fairly current distribution with some 2.4
> > or better kernel and look _carefully_ at what kind of hardware is in
> > your machine.  My Creative Labs Modem Blaster PCI is supposed to be
> > supported under 2.4 kernels with HCF drivers but it doesn't work.  (I
> > have the joy of retro-connecting with my old external 33.6 modem.)
> 
> Having not used a modem in several years, I may not be the best person
> to comment on this, but...  The network config tool in the newer Red Hat
> (7.2 and 7.3) releases looks pretty neat (I read the manual, and looked
> at screenshots)

Mandrake is actually a little easier in that regard.  I'm just using
SUSE because I have it handy.

> > Then there's the ever present issue of connecting to other things in
> > your house - for instance I still can't get CUPS to print to the Windows
> > Postcript laser on my wife's machine and my scanner currently doesn't
> > work yet.  Again, hardware issues - they come up with any operating
> > system.
> 
> Weird.  I needed to share my printer among the people in the house, most
> of whom are running Windows.  I attempted to share my printer from XP
> (which I have for gaming), and we couldn't make it work.  I rebooted
> into Linux, fired up samba, and we were printing from any machine in the
> house in about 10 minutes.  All I can say is "Windows sucks".

It does indeed.  The problem is almost certainly me though in this
case.  I never had to configure any of my SUSE boxes to print to a
remote Windows printer before and CUPS seemed like a goot choice over
lp-foo or anything else.  I've always had to configure it the other
direction.  I may switch the printer to a Linux box but it's a serial
printer so that may give me just as many headaches.  Just have to see
how it pans out.

Mike Hebel