I was a Macintosh Programmer.

I would love to get over to Linux.
I tried it with Lindows, since I am a newbie to Linux.

Here is my problem list.

I have LEXMARK printers. The one's I have do not have drivers. So I
got this list from CUPS? and they said to buy one of these printers.
Well, Walmart does not have them. Walmart has mostly LEXMARK and
NEWER PRINTERS, to which there are no drivers.

I also have HP PSC 750's for scanner/copiers. I never was able to get
the scanner to work, let alone attempt OCR.

There is NO good Small Business Accounting program. MoneyDance is kind
of cool, but no INVOICES.

I FAIL to understand why I have to type all these freaking commands in
a Terminal.

I FAIL to understand why I have to CHECKSUM5 my downloads.

IF ... the Linux programmers would spend less time on the DISTRO and
all the versions, and work on drivers and utilites to make this easy,
it would NOT be a NIGHTMARE to some of us.

So far, the low cost has cost thousands of dollars in lost
productivity for lawyers that would have been billable. It has cost
more then evil MICROSOFT.

I can't stand microsoft stuff.
I think I am going to go play with APPLE stuff.
I liked that BE OS but it died.

In the end, I blew away all the LINDOWS partitions, and we are not
going back. EVEN though the people of this group are the MOST HELPFUL
people I ever met.

-Trent
(Dymanic, Meta Based, Data Driven, Database Applications)

On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 06:27:39 -0800, Trent wrote:

Maybe you should try a different distro.


Which Lexmark printers?

Get your printers from some place besides Walmart.

There are few OCR packages for Linux. I have used SimpleOCR under WINE
with some success. But you do have to have a working scanner.

I have no idea about small business software. Sorry.

What commands?

You don't have to. The checksums are there so you can make sure the file
DLed properly... --if you want to-- .

First, most Linux programmers work o projects that interest them. Second,
distro vendors, pretty much, gather and compile apps and puy together
installation utilities. If you want to converse with app maintainers, I
suggest you get your butt on IRC or onto mailing lists, and ask questions,
make suggestinos or post bug reports.

You can also bitch to the hardware manufacturers that do not write Linux
drivers, and/or do not release specs so others can write the drivers.


That is your fault for not doing your homework and not using test systems.

That is your choice. Apple has a well made and highly integrated
proprietary system built on top of OSS.

Actully there are Open Source versions of BeOS.

That also is your choice.

--
Rick

On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 06:27:39 +0000, Trent wrote:

Having looked at Lindows, I recommend Mandrake, Fedora or SUSE.

For printers, you can't go wrong with PostScript or HP compatible. I have
an Apollo P2200 I got for under $50 from OfficeMax - prints like a dream
with every Linux distro I've tried (at least eight different ones).

For scanners, your best bets are SCSI or Epson. My Epson Perfection 1640SU
(refurb from Epson's web site for $100) works wonderfully, and OCR is
better than I've been able to do with commercial packages on MS-windows.

You don't. Almost every distro has GUI tools to do whatever you want -
setup, etc. This is a place Mandrake and SUSE excell in particular.

You don't. That is only necessary to verify that a download is good before
you use it. If you're confident that there were no download problems,
forget it.

Try a better distribution and you probably won't have nearly that many
problems. A good bet is to download, burn and run Knoppix. It does a very
good job of detecting most hardware. If Knoppix finds it, you can be sure
that a quality distribution will support it.

That's certainly an option. By the way, Macintosh is Unix based. I can't
justify for myself the cost of Mac hardware and software.

Trent wrote:

Your mistake was in picking Lindows. Lindows' founder / CEO Michael
Robertson's is a gadfly. His primary success as a Linux distributer is
being an amusing thorn in the side of Microsoft.

Get a real Linux distro, one whose primary focus isn't extracting money
from users. Mandrake is an excellent newbie distro (yet also suitable for
more advanced users). Mandrake made my transition from a seven years
Windows user to Linux user a pleasant one.

Mandrake 10 will be available for free download to the general public next
Thursday. This is the leading edge "Community" version; not a beta or RC,
yet not as polished as the final "Official" version that won't be released
until May.

http://www.mandrakesoft.com/

Also, Mandrake has its own support newsgroup, alt.os.linux.mandrake.

Then, if after extensive use you decide that Mandrake suits your needs,
consider voluntarily supporting them by joining the Mandrake Club.

I'm running Mandrake 9.1 and even though I have a HP940 (that works
perfectly), my CUPs menu shows support for Lexmark series 1xxx, 5xxx, 7xxx
(hey, I had one of those pieces of junk!), and Z22 through Z52.

I rather doubt that there is no open source program capable of invoicing.

Even if that were true, you would have an opportunity, not a problem. Hire
a programmer to add invoicing capability to an existing GPL licensed
program (upon checking I see that Moneydance is not GPL). You can either
keep the result for yourself, or you can choose to sell it. If the Invoice
module is a truly independent add on, you can sell it on you own terms. If
not, you can sell it per the GPL terms.

Mostly, there are GUI tools in distros like Mandrake. Bash typing, when
needed, is mostly limited to occasional one liners.

Pardon me, but you're starting to sound like some kind of a FAILURE. :-)

Seriously, the purpose of MD5 is extremely simple. It is a quality
assurance check against corruption, both accidental and intentional. You
don't *have* to use it, but it is very foolish to leave the powerful yet
simply tool unused.

It's called freedom of choice. Since you're a Microsoft user I know you're
not accustomed to it, but eventually you'd learn to like it.

Perhaps you haven't heard about dual booting. You can run Windows and
Linux on the same machine. If it takes a while to make Linux work exactly
the way you want it to, there is no need to lose any capabilities. Just
use Windows when necessary and perfect your Linux install (and skills) as
time permits.

Nice, but overpriced.

I hope you decide to give another Linux distro a try.

--
Tony Sivori

Trent wrote:

Even though this post feels familiarly troll-like I will do my best to help.

What model of Lexmark printer do you own - it is possible that you may be
able to use the driver from another model (for example some lexmark inkjets
are HP Deskjet 500C compatible, most lexmark lasers are HP Laserjet 4/5 or
Postscript compatible).

http://hpoj.sourceforge.net/index.shtml has Linux drivers for this
All-in-one device for both printing and scanning,
http://jocr.sourceforge.net/ has an OCR Package.

Your existing Accounts package should run under WINE.

You don't need to Checksum downloads - it is however useful to perform a
checksum to prove the file has downloaded correctly.


Linux developers are separate from the distro makers - there are plenty of
developers working on drivers, it's just stubborn manufacturers refusing to
provide documentation to enable drivers to be written that's the problem.
However the tide is turning - epson have been co-operative for years and HP
have now followed (the hpoj project above is sponsored by HP), Lexmark have
given help for some models, the only real difficult major company now is
Canon who refuse to give any help at all.

Do you really expect developers to buy one of every single piece of hardware
available and waste time reverse-engineering drivers with no appreciation
from users at the end of it?

Next time get a real distro - Redhat (or fedora) , mandrake or suse should
make a better choice for serious use (and debian when you become more
knowledgeable).