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Titel: Tweaker reformed
 Verfasst am: 16.07.2006, 05:17 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 07. Dez 2005
Beiträge: 369
Wohnort: Port Angeles, Wa. USA
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Wow I'm really pleased with this Easter install. A lot more than I have been in the past when I was using 2005-04 & struggling with the CUPS printing problems, & dist-upgrading all the time (at least once a week). I haven't done a DU or installed anything remotely related to printing. I have installed openoffice & upgraded firefox & thunderbird, but other than that, this is a stock install of Easter-RC4. It seems that judging by the numbers of posts relating to it, many, if not most Kanotix users are dist-upgrading quite often. In some cases daily. I don't mean to be insulting or question anyone's decision to do so, but I wonder why?
I used to DU frequently because I felt like I would be missing out on whatever advantage new versions of files offered. I didn't want to be left in the wake of the latest & greatest. After all, isn't that what Kanotix is all about, being based on Debian-sid? Then along came the CUPS debacle, which on top of several other things that were acting quirky, led me to reinstall. I had no backup of course, & I was running out of room on my partitions so it made sense to start over. This time I got things set up more to my satisfaction, am making regular backups, & at least for now am quite content because EVERYTHING WORKS! I've learned (I hope) to be a lot more cautious because I found that it's easier, less time-consuming & frustrating to replace with a backup, than it is to repair things. It hasn't been easy for me to go from being an upgrade junkie to where I am now. I wonder what numbers ratio there might be between those who adhere to the adage, "If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it." & those who can't resist tinkering. I'll bet that the ones who leave things alone don't post here as often as the tweakers, but then it wouldn't be as interesting to read, either.
I guess the question I have is, am I in the minority of Kanotix users by not dist-upgrading? At this point I'm more inclined towards very selective upgrades. |
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illegitimati non carborundum
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Titel: RE: Tweaker reformed
Verfasst am: 16.07.2006, 08:25 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 12. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 1005
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The kanotix developers have always recommended your current practice is the the best course for most kanotix users. Don't do an upgrade, wait until the next stable release to upgrade.
the only problem is, heh heh, none of them set an example for you to follow in this regard, most upgrade all the time, they are after all developers and need to see what is coming down the road before you do.
I played around with a lot of failed linux installs, for years, probably 5 years or so, before switching fulltime. When I switched, I did several things, based on previous experience. Some of these things came about just because that's how I tend to work anyway, but many came about because I knew I'd be moving to linux:
1. No printer
2. No wireless
3. Nvidia graphics.
4. Make sure I used a debian apt based system, as close to debian as I could get.
5. Learn how to live with that process so I can have an upto date system that is an actual working, production desktop.
6. Kick the dual boot habit as much as possible, not 100% for me yet, but it's getting very close, I'd say it's around 99.8% currently non windows for me, I can tell it's getting less and less windows by the month because I'm getting more and more tempted to just reformat my windows partitions and use them for data or swap or whatever.
Simply removing the less stable desktop elements like printing or wireless saves me massive headaches, no worries, the waters are much more calm. Wired stuff always works, no printers means no printer issues. That might seem trivial, but it's not, at least to me. I threw my printers away years ago, not because of linux, just because I don't like printers at all, junk hardware. I actually do the paperless office thing, takes me forever to find scratch paper to write notes when I need to do that.
I do many more backups than I used to do, because I know there is always a risk in using sid dist-upgrade. However, since my backups now are all scripted and run fine, and fast, if I have doubt about a dist-upgrade, I just do a backup before hand. This has already saved my install once so far in the last 6 months or so. Since doing backups is simply good practice, this is hardly a negative or a downside, I just hae the motivation I needed to actually do my backups now.
I do a lot of dist-upgrades, probably weekly, or every two weeks or so, I also have multiple test installs so I can break a system and not have it affect my main system. I never do a dist-upgrade on my main system wihtout first doing it on a secondardy system or install first. This goes especially for kernels by the way, if you like your current wireless or whatever, whatever you do, do not upgrade your stuff, especially the kernel.
However, I should say, none of my test installs have broken, they are all rock solid, all more or less fully upgrade, none use printers, wireless, or any other stuff like that. Totally solid, no failures, fulltime working desktops, now that kde 3.4 moved to 3.5 some instability issues seem to have gotten resolved.
I watch the forums, since a dist-upgrade is not necessary for my work, I do them when there are no issues.
What's the problem with not upgrading? It's pretty major, the longer you wait, the rougher the upgrade will be. I don't plan on playing the reinstall game, if I did, why use debian systems, I could use any release distro like opensuse, fedora, whatever, just wait to be fed the next version, install that, then go on, reconfiguring my whole system every 6 to 18 months. That's not why I use debian, I use debian so I don't have to do that game, I want to see how long I can keep an upto date installation running without reinstalls. To me 2 years is ok, 3 years is decent, 4 years is good, 5 years is very good. More than that and debian is an an entirely different level from every other os on the planet.
However, since I realized before starting that linux has a relatively tiny market share, this means that desktop specific stuff may be problematic at any time. Server stuff will be rock solid, since linux servers power companies, the web, they are everywhere, but I've seen so many app bugs so far in so many different ways, you have to accept certain realities, this linux as a desktop system is under developement.
And sid is unstable, and unstable is not a metaphore for stable, it means unstable. That's why they call it unstable. So the best strategy for me is minimizing the components that might break, and then keeping a close watch on the rest. Sid is bumpy, but made manageable by tne kanotix crew.
They can't fix cups, they made xorg 7 work, they made dbus/hal stuff work very fast when it changed, it's a good effort overall, and it really helps to stop using stuff that isn't well supported, and focus on the strengths of linux. You can believe how fast, for example, a roughly 10 mB text ascii sql file opens in kate compared to opening it on some app in windows, just as an example.
I would guess you are in the majority, but many people want to see what's up with the latest versions, linux tends to attract tweakers and hackers by its own reputation and strengths, so that's hardly surprising.
Others will have different views, those are mine. You should base your decisions on what works for you, what you are willing to risk, the time you are willing to spend on issues, and what you need to work always.
So why do dist-upgrades? It's simple, new features, bug fixes are all added all the time, it's nice seeing feature x or y that was borked suddenly working. Since I'm careful on dist-upgrades, I have avoided most issues with them, that means most of what I see is either transparent, or fixed issues that come as pleasant surprises. It's not just tbird that has bugs and or new features, many apps have things fixed or added all the time. |
Zuletzt bearbeitet von h2 am 16.07.2006, 08:35 Uhr, insgesamt 3 Male bearbeitet
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Titel: RE: Tweaker reformed
Verfasst am: 16.07.2006, 08:29 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 02. Mai 2004
Beiträge: 471
Wohnort: Portland, OR, USA
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| h2, been meaning to ask: How exactly do you back up your data? (And what's your web address again?) |
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Titel: RE: Tweaker reformed
Verfasst am: 16.07.2006, 08:40 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 12. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 1005
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I made an rdiff-backup script, it backs up to an external drive, in my case, 4 different operations to 4 different folders, actually 8, I added a switch to it so I can do a backup to one of two main backup directories, bu-1 or bu-2 on the external drive, so I can have several months, literally, of backups at my fingertips. Very useful when you screwed up some website or script some months ago but can't really remember why or how.
Script backs up /home, /, and two specific data directories I use for specific purposes. So if I bork a dist-ugprade, all I have to do is restore /, that's it. My /home partition, and all my data partitions, are not on /, by the way. That is and always has been, in my opinion, a bad habit done for reasons I don't understand and which make no sense to me, although maybe they make sense to others. But to me it's just bad practice, and I see every year someone suffering for following that practice, while I never see anyone suffering for being extra careful
I was going to post it, but since backups are so specific to each system, I didn't post the file, I don't want people messing up their backups because of some misunderstanding or misconception, but it's not hard to figure out: man rdiff-backup has very complete instructions. site at techpatterns.com |
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Titel: RE: Tweaker reformed
Verfasst am: 16.07.2006, 09:58 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 07. Dez 2005
Beiträge: 369
Wohnort: Port Angeles, Wa. USA
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"What's the problem with not upgrading? It's pretty major, the longer you wait, the rougher the upgrade will be."
That is of some concern to me, but as you say the kanotix crew does a good job of making things managable with their release upgrades. Thanks for the reply & link to techpatterns--interesting forum. |
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illegitimati non carborundum
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Titel: RE: Tweaker reformed
Verfasst am: 16.07.2006, 11:34 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 16. Aug 2004
Beiträge: 1905
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| Most of the problem with fixing CuPS is that I can't debug it myself, as my IEEE1284/ PCL5e HP LaserJet 4 plus and IIIp are working fine... This doesn't mean I'd be able to fix any problem with CuPS in a reasonable time, but debugging is next to impossible if there is no way to recreate the buggy situations. |
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Titel: RE: Tweaker reformed
Verfasst am: 16.07.2006, 11:43 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 05. Dez 2005
Beiträge: 414
Wohnort: Auckland, New Zealand
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rdiff-backup is quite literally one of the best things I've come across in linux. It's saved me so many times. There is pain to begin with, but the rewards are great. It has taken the fear out of trying new things.
I now think a good backup program should have the following qualities:
- automated backups (I hate having to remember to backup my system, so root's crontab runs my backup script ... no manual intervention necessary)
- fast restore (I get "/" back to exactly what it was in 15 mins, no mater how much I've borked things up)
- incremental backups (ie only the changes are backed up, which leads to less data transfer and faster backups)
- backup history kept (ie so you can restore your partition - or even a directory - from several days/months ago ... eg if you delete a file, not only do you have an instant undelete, but if you don't realize that you have deleted the file until a week later, you can still undelete it!)
- supports backup to separate physical disk (ie in case your main disk dies)
- supports backup to off-site location (ie in case your pc gets stolen ... rdiff-backup can backup to remote pc's via encrypted ssh ... not that I use this option) |
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Titel: RE: Tweaker reformed
Verfasst am: 16.07.2006, 19:30 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 12. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 1005
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| 2radical, the other thing I forgot, is buy your hardware for linux, including printers. For example, I believe that hp has pretty good support, while something else might not. Until market share grows, it's best to stick with the names that people use actively, not pray that some model or other will get support, I'd stick to hp personally if I were going to print on linux. |
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Read more on dist-upgrades using du-fixes-h2.sh script.
New: rdiff-backup script
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 16.07.2006, 20:31 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 02. Mai 2004
Beiträge: 471
Wohnort: Portland, OR, USA
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Here's a specific printer example for you. Samsung makes some very inexpensive laser printers.
(They get you later with toner/drum cartridges that cost more than the printers do, unless you find deals online. That's correct: If you only shop at Fry's, it's less expensive to buy a new printer and chuck the "old" one out, than it is to buy a new cartridge.)
Samsung includes proprietary Linux printer drivers, although CUPS supports many of their printers natively.
There's a model that's a fax/printer/scanner "all-in-one" that CUPS doesn't support, printing-wise. The supplied Linux driver works fine on Fedora and Suse (or at least it did, a few versions ago), but since it includes its own version of SANE, and its own device nodes in /dev, I don't want to take the chance of screwing up APT by installing it on Debian.
So when running Kanotix, it's a paperweight. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 16.07.2006, 21:06 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 07. Dez 2005
Beiträge: 369
Wohnort: Port Angeles, Wa. USA
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Zitat:
2radical, the other thing I forgot, is buy your hardware for linux
I was in our Costco here yesterday & was looking at all kinds of computer related stuff, software, hardware, & NONE of it was compatible with linux, which was a little irritating to me. I didn't feel too bad though, after looking at a boxed windows upgrade priced over $200! I thought, why would anybody in their right mind want to purchase that considering how much trouble it is to install & update with security patches, etc.? One of these days I'm going to buy a digital camera. I know almost nothing about them at this point, & wonder if it makes much difference which make. I guess what's more important is the software interface, but that's a whole other topic. I was looking at the title of this topic thinking maybe I misnamed it, because I'm not so much "reformed" as I am more cautious. And yeah, having backups does give me a lot more of a secure feeling. I won't do without them again. |
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illegitimati non carborundum
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 16.07.2006, 21:16 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 12. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 1005
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No, don't look at what companies say, look for what users of the distro say, ask them. Like this: does printer brand x version y work on kanotix or debian in general.
Your best bet with costco stuff is to totally ignore what the boxes say.
Digital cameras are easy though, just start digikam, open up the camera selection dialogue, and there you'll see a list of all supported cameras. Buy one of them and you'll be happy. I was lucky, mine was on the list, and it works perfectly, better than with the junk windows software canon provided. Still works better, by quite a bit. The same cannot be said for my scanner however, which does sort of work, but not very well. It's a case by case basis.
If the camera you look at is not supported, you won't have any fun. If it's a major brand and a major version and maybe more than 6 months or a year old, it will probably have native support, which is a real pleasure by the way, I hated how my camera stuff 'worked' on windows. same for my firewire external drive, barely worked on windows, works fine with kanotix, so the story goes both ways.
In the case of costco, just buy the product, bring it home, see if it runs on kanotix, if it doesn't, return it, ignore what the box says, good stuff will probably run unless a specific release number is not supported, with costco it's a free trial though since return policy is good. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 16.07.2006, 22:49 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 02. Mai 2004
Beiträge: 471
Wohnort: Portland, OR, USA
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Or take the LiveCD with you and ask them if you can pop it in their demo box. Worst they can say is "no."
Even if your camera isn't supported natively in Digikam, chances are it'll have a USB port, and when you plug it into your PC it'll show up as a generic USB drive (similar to a USB key). Digikam can work with that. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 16.07.2006, 23:33 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 24. Mai 2005
Beiträge: 354
Wohnort: Nashville
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Swynndla wrote a great piece on rdiff-backup which you can find here:
http://www.kanotix.com/FAQ-id_cat-70.html
I modified it for my situation and use it regularly.
You can find h2's dist-upgrade script here:
http://techpatterns.com/forums/about736.html
I use it exclusively because he's included everything that you need to consider. It's excellent.
Regarding printers, I have a Samsung ML-1430 Laser and it works fine with Linux. If I were in the market for a printer, I would first look at the linuxprinting.org database. If you go to www.linuxprinting.org, there's a link in the second paragraph. Epson and HP, among others, seem to work well with Linux, but check the database because there are exceptions. |
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Debian Social Contract
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 17.07.2006, 00:01 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 12. Mar 2005
Beiträge: 1005
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michael7, next to come: a feature that will stop dist-upgrades if any problems exist that are known, whether large or small.
That's actually going to be very easy to implement, I worked out the last details in my head the last few days. Now it's just a matter of overcoming sheer laziness and creating the necessary components to do that. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 17.07.2006, 02:28 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 24. Mai 2005
Beiträge: 354
Wohnort: Nashville
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h2,
I look forward to it, as I'm sure everyone else does, too. Thank you for your contributions to Kanotix.
michael |
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Debian Social Contract
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 17.07.2006, 12:26 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 09. Jan 2006
Beiträge: 1720
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always working printers for everyone, HP-not-Lowcost, all printers wit PCL4,5,6 or PS native support.
Tried, HP 85X, 87X, 97x, PSC-12XX, HP-LJ-PS/PCL/Jet-Direct, Samsung-PCL supported, Kyocera-PCL-Supported, non low-cost epsons, except Martix-printers
Lasers with GDI will work on other distros, than debian-based and by default stated windows only!
@eco2geek: I looked at Samsung, and what can you see? Yes they have some mullti-Func. printers with PCL-Support and they work, but the price is more than you would pay. The Low-cost MF-printers are gdi-based, same with Brother, Lexmark.... |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 18.07.2006, 08:18 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 02. Mai 2004
Beiträge: 471
Wohnort: Portland, OR, USA
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The Samsung ML-1710 and -1740 printers we have work OK with CUPS (yes, GDI-based). There's a problem with alternating white and gray horizontal bands, like you would see on bank statements and web page backgrounds. The gray horizontal bands are printed all over the place, instead of where they should be. It's frustrating to get a better printout from Windows than from Linux.
One thing to note about HP: they have pretty good customer support. A while back, some of their inkjets' rollers started to fail as they aged, picking up two or more pieces of paper when they should have only picked one up. HP sent out a mechanism that roughed up the rollers, along with software (unfortunately, Windows-only) to run the procedure, at no charge, upon demand. |
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Titel:
Verfasst am: 18.07.2006, 13:38 Uhr
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Anmeldung: 09. Jan 2006
Beiträge: 1720
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@eco2geek,
I wrote earlier, that Cups 1.2 has a bug in his interpreter for some printer.ppd's.
That contains the bug placeing the print out at the right position.
The part with HP and their Inkjets, you can use a 600-Sandpaper with no print out. Only send FF to the printer. Than use some alcohol, cleaning all rubber-rollers. Wait 5 minutues until the next "real" print out.
That has done the cleaning-job for about 4 years.
Btw.: HP and thier PART-Surfer is a good site for finding part-numbers and errors to solve problems with HP-printers.
Great detailed description exploding-draws where to find the part. Thats what a mechanic-supplier wants to. |
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