Wireless Printing & Scanning w/ Linux

I recently bought a HP Photosmart C4385 all-in-one printer/scanner. Nice thing about it is that printing/scanning can be done over wi-fi.

But to tell the truth I didn’t even hope that scanning would work over wi-fi with my Linux. And guess what? I was wrong! And not only did it work, it also took me just several minutes, probably even less then on windows (for which drivers where provided on a CD) to set it up.

Big thanks to HP for their support of Linux customers!

P.S.
Sorry I’m to lazy to write a howto, so just couple links:

• http://hplip.sourceforge.net/ - the drivers that do the magic, especialy nice ‘hp-toolbox’ tool
• http://gentoo-wiki.com/HPLIP - Gentoo wiki page with lots of information

P.S.S.
Obviously printing worked just fine too :)

CommunityOne Conference

It is seems to be conference season in Silicon Valley now. The big JavaOne is almost here and to get everyone ready Sun set up the CommunityOne conference. This was mainly a one day event there was something yesterday (on Sunday) but very little.
The CommunityOne is free and is dedicated to open source. It left me no excuse for missing it. Well, I didn’t:

I should say it was more interesting than Web 2.0 Expo. Less buzz more technical stuff. Overall I’m very satisfied. Plus I’ve got a nice t-shirt with opensource mascot patterns:

Using a remote printer shared on windows xp from KDE

KDE has a very nice tool for configuring printers in ControlCenter.
Provided you have samba packages installed you can use it to add a printer shared on a windows xp computer. As designed it should work as a 5 click solution.
But for some weired reason (donna if it’s a windows or kde bug), SCAN function didn’t work well for me. It would display windows networks, it would even display computers in that networks, but when trying to look at available priters I would get:

Error returning browse list: NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED

Here is a solution I’ve found on Mepis forums:
- When you launch the Add printer wizard, choose SMB shared printer.
- In the next screen(user identification), choose Anonymous(no login/no password)
- Proceed to the next screen, and SCAN your network.(This is where you will get the NT_ACCESS_DENIED message if you try to access your Windows network)
- Now Don’t touch anything, and go BACK one step to the previous screen (User identification).
- In the user identification screen, choose guest(login = “guest”).
- Proceed to the next screen. DO NOT repeat a scan. Just try to access your Windows network in the displayed tree. You should magically see your Windows printer appear without any whining about access.

All you smart people out there give me some advice

I use KDE.

I love:
Katapult
digiKam
K3b
Kopete
amaroK
yakuake

I like:
Ktorrent
Codeine

I hate:
konqueror (both as file manager and as browser)

I wish:
there was a way to completely replace konqueror with something simpler, like dolphin for example
firefox was ported to QT
eclipse was ported to QT
openoffice was better and ported to QT
Kget was better, had download speed throttling and schedule (like ktorrent)

Applications I use:
very often:
Katapult
firefox
Kopete
Eclipse
OO Writer
konqueror

often:
amaroK
kmail

from time to time:
digiKam
codeine
mplayer

rarely:
K3b

The “I wish” part upsets me, so here is my question:
How can I become happy?

Update: I’m happy now! 

Arch Linux

Preface

It’s been only 2 weeks since I’d decided to stick with openSUSE but in a week or so I got tired of it. It feels bloated. It’s not as bad as Sabayon of course but still it didn’t make me happy.

While looking through different distros earlier this month I noticed one that I would like to try if I have a little more time.

The Linux Quest

Preface

As I wrote before, I’ve been using Kubuntu Edgy 64bit and I was pretty much satisfied with it.
The only problem I had was with my laptops built-in web camera. There are no drivers for Linux and it doesn’t seem there will be anything in the near future.

(Note: there are some people out there struggling to create those drivers but I don’t think they will have any good results till end of this year)

And when my parents asked to set up skype video conference with their friends I had no other choice then installing windows.

And as I’ve been using the Kubuntu for 4 month I decided to reformat my entire system and do a clean setup of Windows and Linux.

Fixing sound in Linux (simple tip)

I’m running Kubuntu Edgy 64bit on my laptop.

And I had this strange problem, my laptop speakers wouldn’t work although headphones did work fine and everything in my KMix was set to maximum.

The solution was just too simple and I wouldn’t post it here but it seems to me many people might come accross this and I hope my little note will save them time.

Just type alsamixer in console and turn everything to maximum :) (Don’t forget to turn mute off using “m” key)