Comments on: Trial by fire: distro upgrade

By: hp scanner printer worx

hp scanner printer worx — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:10:23 +0000

Totally agreed, the problem is Epson’s lack of support for Linux. Having said that, no matter how much you like Linux a lot of manufacturers don’t bother supporting it and at some point it just isn’t worth the hassle. It is what it is, and time is money.

By: Stu

Stu — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:33:40 +0000

Always when I update the kernel this sort of thing happens to me. I don’t know why I don’t learn, in the case of not being able to boot my kurobox I’ve just left it for 9 months.
Usually it’s the proprietory display drivers that break.
All in all it’s a PITA, I woudln’t mind, except that it happens over and over again.

By: Dave Neary

Dave Neary — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:08:53 +0000

Robert:

For scanning: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sane-backends-extras/+bug/380379

For printing, indeed, I didn’t think of this as a “bug”, just incomplete support. And as I said, giving a solution to the issue Google juice is, I think, a nice thing to do.

Dave.

By: Robert Smol

Robert Smol — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:08:22 +0000

Sorry to hear that I guess since it does not work out of the box it is somehow broken. And what you did was an exception instead of filling up a bug and solve it once for all.

If you start caring too much about exceptions you end up with old legacy system which nobody can fix or upgrade.

With that said I understand your frustration, however Linux community was always great because there are capable people which fix problem instead just complaining.

By: Marius Gedminas

Marius Gedminas — Tue, 26 May 2009 21:07:12 +0000

I started making notes (in a text file, called /root/Changelog) about anything complicated I do to my machines. This means that if I have to reinstall and spend hours re-doing something I fixed 6 months ago, well, I’ll have my notes.

Speaking about hardware — I’ve heard many times from Ubuntu community members that if something doesn’t just work after plugging it in, then it’s a bug and should be reported as such. Sadly, not all bugs get fixed quickly (or, sometimes, at all).

By: ethana2

ethana2 — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:57:33 +0000

Ubuntu should have official hardware testers. I’ve got a DCP-7020, a DigiPro graphics pad, a Motorola v325i, and wiimote, and a bt headset, among other things.

By: btmorex

btmorex — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:32:58 +0000

I think at a certain point, you have to have vendor support to have a good user experience. Epson doesn’t care about Linux. Worse, a lot of people will say something works, when works really means “sort of works after fiddling with it for a day”.

I’d suggest just buying stuff that is well supported by the vendor… for printers that means HP who have very good Linux drivers (it’s easier to get a HP printer working in Linux than in any other OS).

By: sebastian

sebastian — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:17:06 +0000

There are two things that made me give up on Linux as a desktop system after 10+ years of using it: unavailability of Adobe InDesign (pretty specific, I’ll admit) and what you just described.

There comes a time when you just can’t justify, to yourself, the amount of time you’re spending troubleshooting problems like those.

It’s really too bad because that’s the kind of experience that ruins the amazing work that goes into the system otherwise.

By: CoolGoose

CoolGoose — Tue, 26 May 2009 18:12:23 +0000

I’m sorry to hear about that Dave.
I never used ubuntu with any Epson printer so I can’t share my experience, but with an HP one it works perfectly. (even over network).
Just go to printers > make it search > it installs the required drivers > yay.
It’s so much easier than in any Windows version (XP or Vista).