This is a little ... different to what I'm used to. I'm sure I'll get used to the new way of installing things like I did with Ubuntu back in '05 but it's definitely different to what I'm used to.
This is a little ... different to what I'm used to. I'm sure I'll get used to the new way of installing things like I did with Ubuntu back in '05 but it's definitely different to what I'm used to.
Power is something that should be given to those who need it to serve and withheld from those who seek it to rule.
Well, hardest part is done... You're up and running with it. ROFL!!
Oh that wasn't hard. It has a whole different philosophy on doing things that will take some getting used to. I've just got it set up as multi-lib now (needed for my cisco software I need for uni as well as the crunching stuff. It was pure 64bit to start with.) and just got LibreOffice 3.4.3 64bit up and running as well ... though printing is being problematic for some reason.
and now the printer won't work properly. Prints one page, then the first three lines of the next, then again on top of itself, then again on top twice, then again three times ... and the xfce panel just went walkabout on it's own and won't respond, and it won't shut down when I use the command ...
This is not at all as functional as I was lead to believe. NOT happy!
Whole thing went pear shaped. I can't abide a distro that can't get basic print drivers right out of the box. Canonical are a bunch of self righteous assholes for what they're doing, but at least I can work around everything I've come up against so far without it costing me important documents. I was excited about using Slack when I started this thread. Back to Ubuntu 10.04 now. Might look at Debian later if I don't go out and pick a fight with the biggest Pacific Islander I can find out of sheer frustration. It's probably no better though.
I've borked more than one install during the first go round.. Especially when learning a new way of getting shit done. (Or having the ransom "what does "this" do moment)Yes... Quite frustrating.
Sorry, but that's not Slackware to blame. It comes with the same printer drivers that any other distribution does (CUPS) and can be configured with a few mouse clicks through the web interface (that Ubuntu removes to force you to use their shit).
http://localhost:631
ctrl-alt-backspace if an X client won't shut down.
Sorry, it was the printer drivers or Slack's implementation of them. I had it configured just fine and it would work fine so long as I only printed ONE page. Try and print more than that and it was a disaster. Put an Ubuntu live CD in and it worked perfectly on the spot.
I also got fed up having to either convert packages with alien or find mirrors where someone else had already rebuilt everything. Sure the community is great, but I needed it working again and that wasn't going to happen quickly.
This distro is probably great if you've got all day every day to sit around fekking about getting things to work right. I don't. If I can't trust the base system to be rock solid, and now I can't, then it's no use to me.
I've got big sympathy for the point of view. I really, really liked Gentoo, but bugger me it's insanely time consuming to get things up and running, and right.
If I had a dime for everyone who tried Slackware and had a hissy fit, I wouldn't have to work.
Well, I got it installed fine, got the pure 64bit version running my 32bit uni software (although with hideous fonts) and got it crunching. Up to that point I was happy with it. When it went "special needs" on me while trying to print off something the wife needed urgently I realised this was not the kind of distro where I can trust things will just work. I suppose I could have dug out and reinstalled the relevant HP drivers but when I rebooted to be sure everything was applied (habit after kernel updates) I lost my panel and am not familiar enough with it to navigate everything without it. If I'd had a few weeks to settle in before it went all Forest Gump on me it might not have been so bad. I can see that Slack is very flexible, so long as you do it all your self, but when something as simple as printing a five page document sends it birko ... no, not for me.
I don't know what's up with the printer, but for some models there are more than one driver. (This is why I use the CUPS interface rather than relying on some desktop environment's printing system to detect and configure a driver, because there's a big drop list of drivers to choose). Especially HP... there's the standard CUPS driver, and the HPIJS driver for most models.
I disagree... Slackware is a system that I can trust where things will work, and stay working. I don't even find it especially more work, because it's a nice simple system that is easy to maintain my way, without it fighting against me. Those so called "easy" distributions are a hindrance to me.
It was the CUPS driver that I was using. I'll scan a page later to show you what I mean. It's some bizarre messed up shit.
My experience with Slackware thus far has not reflected yours, however now I've calmed down I might be willing to give it another go. If it behaves the same way again I will, however, put an axe through the install dvd and think about using Debian or just learning how to hack the new Ubuntu into something less hideous.
Ok, Slackware is installing again. I'm either persistent or a masschistic idiot. Time will tell I suppose.
Or quite possibly, a bit of both?
ROFL!!!
DA if you do decide to go back to Ubuntu, maybe consider Mint, or LMDE which has the good stuff from Mint but not the bad stuff from Ubuntu
I got pretty good at stripping crud from a default Ubuntu install.
I'm back in Slackware now and STILL fighting with this damn printer. POS won't print at all now. Got the fonts worked out in PacketTracer at least.
What model of printer is it? There may be a specific workaround.
HP Photosmart c3100 series. has always worked fine and still does in ubuntu.
Now I'm just getting solid black boxes no matter what I try to print.
I've tried installing via CUPS (first try), then through the menus and have tried downloading and installing the latest version of hplip and used HP-setup all with no success.
Getting a common as dirt printer running should not be this hard.
I would expect that Ubuntu loads a different driver for it. Perhaps you could boot with a Live CD and see what it is, if it doesn't work as advertised even with HPLIP, and HP's own driver.
Perhaps the Foomatic/HPIJS driver.
Or maybe downgrading HPLIP is the answer (e.g. to the same version that Ubuntu has)
The HPIJS driver prevents the scanner from working. I'm done here. I tried. I like almost everything about if something as pedestrian as printing is this hard I'm not wasting any more time on Slackware. Thanks for trying, G. I appreciate it. Now if you'll excuse me I have a 44 gallon drum of oonga boonga koolaid to get through.
Well, It's not difficult to get a printer going in Slackware. It's likely THAT one (or those ones) that have the problem. As for the scanner, yes, most HP scanners require drivers from HP. Only some of their older models are supported by SANE.
It sounds to me like HP broke the driver, with respect to that model.
Be that as it may, I'm back in Ubuntu. I'll keep the Slackware dvd I made in case I change my mind later but for now it's more trouble than it's worth to me. All the stuffing around has caused me a few issues in my various config files as it is (I keep my home partition separate so my profile configs follow me around) but I've got most of that sorted out. The printer picked up on the spot though. Now I have a rotten headache and half an ink cartridge blown. yay.
Like I said, I liked almost everything about Slack but the printer shinnanigans was a deal breaker for now. If that had worked out of the box, or at least without several hours of screwing around for no result last night and again today, I doubt I'd have gone back to Ubuntu.
I've grown to truly hate inkjet printers. Mostly cause the waste of ink. The shit costs too much for what you get.. and... They either use it too quickly, or if you don't print often enough the ink goes to shit just sitting there.
I actually calculated all the wasted ink VS. the cost of color toner... Comes out about even and laser toner doesn't care if you let it sit for 6 months between color print jobs. Cost of toner based on number of pages advertised. Not to mention you can't get 1500 pages 50% coverage out of an ink cartridge.
My next printer will be a color laser... If my now 8 year old Brother laser ever dies. ROFL!!! Monochrome.... 6k page rated toner cartridge. Only on it's third cartridge... LOL!!!
I had a Kyocera mono laser I picked up for nothing due to the amount of work it'd done. 40k pages or so from memory. Needed some major maintenance but I kept it plugging along on what was left in the toner pack for some time. Very reliable printer overall but it was just plain wore out.
That's what I'm waiting for this one to do, Just up an wear out. When I bought it, work had picked up a bunch of the things about a year prior to my purchase. My theory was if they can put up with the printing we were doing there, Damn thing would last me FOREVER!... So far, it's proving me right.
(The office would eat up a high yield 6k page toner cartridge in less than a month.)
There was also the added beni of a couple toner cartridges and a spare drum being able to "accidentally" fall in my bag shortly before I retired.
I use HP printers and have never had a problem with Slackware, except for scanning out of the box. I set up an HP printer using hp-setup. After that is finished, I run from a terminal:
This will return a line for the usb connected HP printer:Code:~$ lsusb
The printer should be ok at this point except for scanning and communicating with the hp toolbox found in the utilities menu. Udev controls this stuff and I don't know crap about writing or changing udev rules - so I do an end-run around it.Code:Bus 001 Device 002: ID 03f0:2112 Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet Pro L7500
Using the above line from the command lsusb, I add a line to /etc/rc.d/rc.local:
That is the exact line from my machine and must be changed to match your system. Now scanning will work, and it will properly communicate with the toobox so that you can clean heads, print test pages, see how much ink is left, and other what-not stuff.Code:chmod a+rw /dev/bus/usb/001/002
I'll leave this for a few days, say after surgery at least and probably exams as well now, before coming back to it. I jsut got the printing working fine in my VM using the included drivers and a downloaded 64bit CUPS package. After midnight here now so not the time to be playing with something I need working.
Ok, turns out the weird ass printing has something to do with CUPS and the multi-lib setup. I did the multi-lib thing and got the same problem from page 2 on so I reintsalled the 64bit CUPS package and now it works.
I still have to get the scanner working though.
edit: yes this means I'm back in Slackware again.
well bugger me! The scanner worked first try! That's more like it.
Last edited by Dark Angel; 10-24-2011 at 05:56 PM.
Ahhhhh! I don't do the multilib thinghy. I tried it once, but gave it up after a few months. It seems that the only thing I had multilib for was google earth. Hardly worth the effort just for that! Anyways - glad its sorted!
Yeah I need it for my Cisco stuff. Wouldn't have thought it would screw up the printer driver like that but there you go.
Having to do the whole "alien" thing with some fiddling around was a PIA, as was fixing the font issue (HIDEOUS fonts, worse in Slack than Ubuntu even) but it seems to be happy now.
Last edited by Dark Angel; 10-24-2011 at 06:35 PM.
Actually I suspected it might have something to do with the multilib replacements, but I had no proof and didn't want to fearmonger or detract from that guy's work unnecessarily (His extra efforts fill a gap that probably makes Slackware usable for some people that otherwise couldn't). You are changing out glibc and the compiler runtimes with supposedly the same, but multilib versions from someone else's package tree. There are bound to be some things that "don't like that" (need recompiling)
From now on, I'm going to go with my gut and mention things, even if unlikely. (Most things would not be affected by that)
I suspect the solid black pages I was getting were my fault in the end. I noticed I'd downloaded the 32bit cups package when I tried to fix it last time and replaced that with the 64bit version this time. Apparently I wasn't paying attention when I downloaded it last time.
Ok, installing the latest VirtualBox was REALLY easy ... but if I say I'm getting the hang of this I'm bound to screw up something major, so "it's still really awkward" ... or something.
Upgrading VirtualBox is also easy, if you have used the .run file ("for all distributions") from virtualbox.org
You just run the new one (e.g. "sh VirtualBox-blah-amd64-whatever-xxxxx.run") and it removes the old and installs the new for you and compiles new kernel modules etc. No settings are lost.
When you upgrade your kernel, just do:
/etc/rc.d/rc.vboxdrv setup
To only build and install new kernel modules. (Unless there's a new version of VirtualBox you haven't got yet, in which case it's a perfect time to upgrade)
After those annoying problems, having something work exactly like it should is damn near arousing. Of course I'm still beginning with this distro, but I'm seeing more promise already.
I have been having a wicked time with 13.37 and a hp deskjet 1000 j110 printer. It now seems to work but that may be problematic. Just wanted to thank all here for their input and leave this note:
it should not be needed to add rw privs to /dev//bus/usb/<bus>/<dev> as users must be added to /etc/group anyway. If anyone hadn't noticed they need to be added to scanner and another group which I have for the moment forgotten along with root. If anyone gets overprinting (loss of line control) I found that turning on printer then booting after having cleared ques then when booted disconnect and reconnect USB cable seems to make all right.
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