After looking for a bit online, and checking the Linux books at the local bookstore, and still not finding any solution to the mouse issue I’ve been having, I decided to reinstall SuSE Linux. Now, if I can believe some of the comments from an earlier post of mine on living with Linux, SuSE may not be the best choice for a speedy system. But I already have a DVD for it, which makes for pretty fast installation.
The installation went fine, and everything’s pretty much back to normal on my laptop. I even got Linux installed on my desktop, which was kind of a trick because for whatever reason, during the earlier steps in the install process the hard drive would thrash madly for 5-10 minutes between each step. None of the various install options had an effect, and once I just let it do it’s thing (it took about 3 hours) it worked fine.
But that’s not the impressive part.
I have an old HP Laserjet 5l. It’s a parallel port printer, and my desktop computer is one of those Sony slimtop computers that doesn’t have a parallel port. So I use a Belkin USB to parallel converter. When I bought it, I very nearly returned it because I couldn’t get Windows to recognize it, and it didn’t come with any disks or instructions or anything. It basically creates several virtual LPT ports, but it for whatever reason prevents Windows from recognizing the printer attached to it. So, in order to get the printer working, I have to manually add it, and then change the port it uses to each of the virtual ports to figure out which one it’s attached to. It’s a pain, but less of a pain than buying a new printer to replace one that works fine.
But, on my desktop Linux picked out the Belkin, and asked me to config the printer. Not only that, but once I selected the correct model, it worked. The test page came out fine. I’m in the process of setting up Samba server to get my desktop to make that printer available to our laptops. So far no luck, but I haven’t fiddled with it very much.
Related posts:
{ 2 comments }
Re your experience with the Belkin converter… *LOTS* of things work better with Linux than they do with Windows. Some don’t. Chances are, your overall opinion of Linux will depend on which side of that equation the things you most need fall on. The big thing to remember is this… When something doesn’t work in Windows, it’s often the case that your options are limited, if they exist at all. With Linux, your options are often limited by what you decide you want to do about it. That means, just about *anything* can be fixed if you have the drive, patience and determination to fix it.
Linux is just far superior to Windows in every way… it just is.
I don’t much like SuSE, but that’s just me.
Comments on this entry are closed.