how to install the printer

hp laserjet 1018.

decided not to use the AUR package because there seemed to dependencies that weren’t actually needed, like vim. not sure about ‘foomatic db engine’ and ‘psutils’ though.

installed it the old way, following the instructions fro mthe foo2zjs website.

configured cups by going to http://localhost:631 (really weird but interesting way to configure something!). had to plug in and turn on the printer in question in order for it to recognize the device. found the ppd file in foo2zjs/ppd and uploaded it. root and password.

not working at the moment. might have to restart?

[update]

i ended up using the aur foo2zjs package, deleted the source install stuff. installed all the dependencies it asked for. had to add my user to the lp group in /etc/group. cups was already started, so i restarted the printer. and it worked!

arch linux notes!

yay!

1. installation

looked a lot like the slackware installation. i was a little confused about whether or not a separate /boot partition was needed, but nah. grub took care of everything. i think it boots windows, but windows is still going “NTLDR is compressed”, so i don’t know.

2. conf files

it seems like arch’s /etc directory is less cluttered than slackware’s, and the config files are fewer and more concise. nice and neat.

3. wireless

wireless was pretty easy this time around! the kernel came with the iwl3945 driver (replacing ipw3945), so i think all i had to do was get the ucode and install it. it uses wlan0 as the interface instead of eth1 now, interesting. dhcpcd works reliably, yay.

4. Xorg and KDE

learning how to use pacman while installing Xorg was… educational. my first problem with pacman was simply that the only mirror i uncommented wasn’t available. added some more mirrors to download kdemod. i think the kde mod is a little buggy, but it’s still very nice and streamlined. kde4 seems to have a file navigation system (not just konquere as a file browser!) similar to macOS. sweet! simpler and more intuitive. but editing the panel bar is more of a hassle now. oh, note to self: if you want ’startx’ to start kde’, you just have to uncomment the line in the ~/.xinitrc file.

5. sound

downloaded alsa stuff, tried a bunch of things on the wiki. eventually, restarting X did the trick.

pacman (the package manager) is pretty awesome! i can install things so much faster now. i think i may have been doing it the long way with slackware. anyways. i seem to have an alpha version of firefox called shiretoko. it likes to refer to itself as shiretoko. we’ll see how this goes.

distro of choice: arch linux

it’s optimized for i686, so it’s fast as hell. the installation is command-line based, so that means it’s very do-it-yourself. i’m going to download KDEmod 4.2 from the chakra project, and that way i won’t have all those extra applications. i think i can also download lilo instead of grub, so all is well!

i’m not too fond of the new logo, though… i thought the old one was cooler.

Figure 1 — New logo	Figure 2 — Old logo

two articles detailing the awesomeness of arch:

+ life on the cutting edge – archlinux
+ arch linux – 2008.06 Overlord

unfortunately, the server at archlinux.org is undergoing maintenance right now, so i guess i’m just going to have to watch the taiwanese drama ‘black and white’ until it’s back up again. hope it’s sooner rather than later.

time to go back up my files. x_x

after saving windows, it bails on me

just when i actually manage to clear out the horrible XP deluxe protector (malware) and a shitload of other viruses from my computer, the windows bootloader stops working. “ntldr is compressed”. why, why would the nt loader (nt for new technology x_x) stop working now??

maybe i should get rid of windows once and for all. it annoys the hell out of me, and it has outlived it’s usefulness, i think. it’s good for programs like finale notepad and adobe photoshop, but you can find comparable programs for linux. it’s also better at scoping out wireless networks, but i don’t have much use for that either.

meh. i should probably keep it around. as a relic.

polish linux is a good source for picking out which linux distro you want to use. there’s even a survey that you can take, like a little personality quiz. it recommended that i use fedora as #1 and slackware as #5. hmm.

currently contemplating whether i want to install linux mint 7, which i just installed onto my brother’s computer. the grub bootloader conflicting with the windows dual-boot isn’t a problem if i want to scrap windows. but maybe i want to use arch…. but their logo is so ugly now! maybe if they had kde4…

new start-up

finally got rid of the message that said “rc.modules –> rc.modules-2.6.21.5-smp” by removing the symlink and just letting rc.modules.local be the default thing that it read.

broadcom 4318, hp dv8000, on ubuntu jautny

i don’t know why it started working.

i did some combination of the following things:

rmmod ndiswrapper
modprobe b43
iwconfig wlan0 ap any
iwconfig wlan0 rate 11M
dhcpcd wlan0

and the /etc/network/interfaces file looked like this:

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid xxxxx
wireless-key xxxxx
auto wlan0

edit: install the open-source driver from scratch, fwcutter and all, then load the module. internet will magically start working even though ubuntu’s network manager refuses to believe theis.

note to self: how to install moodin in slackware

the slackbuild didn’t work for me, just did a regular build. got the source from here (moodin-0.4.2.tar.gz). unzip, ./configure, make, make install. restart KDE, and voila!

firefox 3

finally installed firefox 3 on linux. this is how it went:

1. could not get anything from the main firefox website to work. very little help and documentation.

2. downloaded and installed the slackbuild from the repository, which was found from the main slackware website. firefox 3.04 in the v12.1 folder. was a tgz file.

3.

$ cd usr/doc/mozilla-firefox-en-us-3.0.4/
$ chmod +x mozilla-firefox-en-us
$ su
# ./mozilla-firefox-en-us.SlackB


restart firefox, and that was it.

it looks buggy in linux, as usually. now i’m just trying to figure out where the back/forward buttons are, and how to get my sneaky chinese pera-kun translator back on. and some skins.

ex-christian.net

so there is this website/blog called exchristian.net that offers support for those who have abandoned the christian religion. it has this really great article comparing the move from christianity to atheism/skepticism to the move from windows to linux.

why i moved to linux” by neal stone.

But once in a while someone, like me, sees the truth and realizes there is an alternative to following the crowd blindly. We then sit down and totally replace our Windows with Linux. We discover a true freedom that sets us apart from the rest. We find life easier to live and enjoy and discover others who have also found this truth. No more lies from the “company”, no more bugs or unexplained issues that people choose to ignore or accept as part of the great plan.

edge

i just installed the edge kde style. i had downloaded it a while ago, but never got around to applying it fully. after looking around for something spruce up my desktop (beryl/compiz! xfce! wm’s! kuartet!), i rediscovered edge on my computer and finished the job. it looks great! happy now.

i listened to a lot of the cranberries. ‘zombie‘ is a special one. i just found a cool recording of a performance on mtv unplugged. they’re irish!