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How to win friends. Microsoft to CIOs: Adopt Windows 8 - or else.

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Carol Haynes:
Just installed UBUNTU in a VM - wooo ... both of my printers work, couldn't believe it (OK it took a few tweaks in CUPS but it was pretty easy).

Also installed Mint - can't get the printers to work in there - and the settings in CUPs seem to be missing - strange since Mint is supposed to be based on Ubuntu!

Now for the harder task can I get the scanner to work on my Canon AIW printer?

Strangley I found a link on Canon Australia for a Linux printer driver, Can I install an RPM package in UBUNTU or MINT?

40hz:
Strangley I found a link on Canon Australia for a Linux printer driver, Can I install an RPM package in UBUNTU or MINT?
-Carol Haynes (March 09, 2012, 06:43 AM)
--- End quote ---

You can using the Alien utility. It's not the recommended way to do things although it usually works correctly in most cases. At least from my experience. YMMV. But I also never tried to use it to load anything very exotic.

The real problem is that each distro handles dependencies differently so there's a risk of dependency conflicts. You can also run into that between major versions of the same distro if you mix and match repositories. (Sort of like trying to use WinXP drivers with Windows 7. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.)  All just part of the 'version' game. See below:

Alien converts an RPM package file into a Debian package file or Alien can install an RPM file directly. This is not the recommended way to install software packages in Ubuntu. If at all possible, install packages from Ubuntu's repositories using Add/Remove, apt-get, or the Synaptic Package Manager. Package dependency conflicts may occur when attempting to install RPM packages. The Synaptic Package Manager may be able to fix or remove any broken packages.
--- End quote ---

See here for details.

I'd suggest having Alien convert the RPM to a Deb package and then install from that rather than using the direct install from RPM option. I'm a firm believer in minimizing variables when going off the reservation for software.

Luck!

Carol Haynes:
Hmmm didn't quite get there - I install x64 and the drivers are x86 so they won't install.

Can't see on Mint how to install drivers at all - the print applet doesn't have any of the options ubuntu has!

Got the scanner working in ubuntu with xane!

Of course I am getting all this working in a VM - how much help it is getting from the printers already installed in the host I am not sure.

J-Mac:
40hz, thank you for all that info!! Sounds like a very good starting point for me to get moving and learn this stuff.   :)

I need to do something because although I used the very first generation Mac (it was Macintosh back then!), as well as its short-lived predecessor, LISA, I hadn't used any Apple equipment since then - unless you want to count the Apple Newton handheld against me! Until I was given an iPad 2 for my birthday two months ago by my dear wife. And though that device truly excels as far as the form of the hardware goes, the OS is extremely frustrating. I haven't jail-broken it yet because as of last month no one had released a method to do that for the iPad 2; only a bastardized 1st gen iPad jailbreaking program that was being reported as really buggy. But based on how iOS handles file organization, keeping it all hidden from the user, I don’t want to think about moving to Apple hardware full-time.

And while Windows 7 has plenty of good features going for it, Microsoft still gives me fits whenever it wants to! (I STILL cannot get a standard, old-fashioned home network to allow file sharing between the damn computers in my house!! Not that PITA HomeGroup crap, but a regular Workgroup-based network.) Don’t know if Linux will get along with me any better but I need to learn it and try it.

Thanks again!

Jim

Carol Haynes:
I STILL cannot get a standard, old-fashioned home network to allow file sharing between the damn computers in my house!!
-J-Mac (March 09, 2012, 10:44 AM)
--- End quote ---

Can I ask why? I haven't had any particular problems with ordinary file sharing. The only exceptions were with Vista (which had a few bugs and so computers didn't show up under network properly - but you could address them by name) and Windows XP which is the only windows to use the workgroup MSHOME - having changed that to Workgroup everything works fine.

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