Ubuntu Vs Windows

[h90]

After several days of change to Ubuntu 10.10 my impressions:

+seems more fast

+more stable

+Software center is nice

+it goes faster online both Wifi and LAN

+free

+with virtualbox you can install WinXP inside Linux and use all programs you use and mostly it is faster than standalone

+no virus

+compare windows with virus scanner against linux without it is much faster

-less software available

-driver support worse (my brother HL-2140 printer driver is a shame)

-Some software is difficult to install

-Energy safe options almost not available

Overall I would say it is slightly better than Win7 with needing less resources. But for the normal office usage lack of good office programs and printer support kills it. For computer which run 24/7 power management is necessary. Software support hopefully gets better if more people use it.

[rakman]

Try Open Office

[h90]

Try Open Office

I use it....I tried to print envelopes. I job of 1 min in Windows with Microsoft office. Need 1 hour with Open Office, with both Open Office and the printer driver to blame.

That is one of the biggest problems I had so far. But I hope with more and more people using the hardware companies will offer more and more driver.

[thrawn60]

I find OpenOffice somewhat complicated as well, but that is mainly since I have gotten used to Microsoft version.. It still takes me a bit longer than normal to perform the task, but I'm getting there.. Between OpenOffice and Scribus plus Gimp I'm managing to do most tasks.

My printer is the cheapest you can get on the market, and funny enough that one worked straight out of the box...

Oh and I'm using Linux Mint which is built from Ubuntu

[Richard-BKK]

The Brother HL-2140 is fully supported with Linux according Brother? (Brother Specs).

For drivers you can download them here Brother Linux Driver Download

1) Plug in the printer to the computer. Ignore all the prompts, hit cancel, etc.

2) Download the LPR and CUPS deb files from this link

3) sudo mkdir /usr/share/cups/model

4) sudo dpkg -i --force-all --force-architecture [the two debs you downloaded]

THE FORCE SWITCHES ARE VITAL FOR 64 BIT MACHINES!

5)Profit. The printer should work and show up as "HL2140".

Edited October 20, 2010 by Richard-BKK

[h90]

The Brother HL-2140 is fully supported with Linux according Brother? (Brother Specs).

For drivers you can download them here Brother Linux Driver Download

1) Plug in the printer to the computer. Ignore all the prompts, hit cancel, etc.

2) Download the LPR and CUPS deb files from this link

3) sudo mkdir /usr/share/cups/model

4) sudo dpkg -i --force-all --force-architecture [the two debs you downloaded]

THE FORCE SWITCHES ARE VITAL FOR 64 BIT MACHINES!

5)Profit. The printer should work and show up as "HL2140".

I think I have that driver already installed, but it is very basic in compare with the windows driver.

I don't know how I can look if I have the same driver?

[Richard-BKK]

The Brother HL-2140 is fully supported with Linux according Brother? (Brother Specs).

For drivers you can download them here Brother Linux Driver Download

1) Plug in the printer to the computer. Ignore all the prompts, hit cancel, etc.

2) Download the LPR and CUPS deb files from this link

3) sudo mkdir /usr/share/cups/model

4) sudo dpkg -i --force-all --force-architecture [the two debs you downloaded]

THE FORCE SWITCHES ARE VITAL FOR 64 BIT MACHINES!

5)Profit. The printer should work and show up as "HL2140".

I think I have that driver already installed, but it is very basic in compare with the windows driver.

I don't know how I can look if I have the same driver?

The Brother drivers are not opensource, so if you did not downloaded drivers from the Brother website, you still using the basic “opensource” drivers from Ubuntu.

To check your current driver version, without using Linux command prompt, you can open Synaptic Package Manager and search for “Brother” look at the drivers selected and compare the version. Not forget that the Opensource and the closed-sourced drivers follow a different development path, so version numbers of opensource packages are not really comparable with closed-source packages.

[h90]

The Brother HL-2140 is fully supported with Linux according Brother? (Brother Specs).

For drivers you can download them here Brother Linux Driver Download

1) Plug in the printer to the computer. Ignore all the prompts, hit cancel, etc.

2) Download the LPR and CUPS deb files from this link

3) sudo mkdir /usr/share/cups/model

4) sudo dpkg -i --force-all --force-architecture [the two debs you downloaded]

THE FORCE SWITCHES ARE VITAL FOR 64 BIT MACHINES!

5)Profit. The printer should work and show up as "HL2140".

I think I have that driver already installed, but it is very basic in compare with the windows driver.

I don't know how I can look if I have the same driver?

The Brother drivers are not opensource, so if you did not downloaded drivers from the Brother website, you still using the basic “opensource” drivers from Ubuntu.

To check your current driver version, without using Linux command prompt, you can open Synaptic Package Manager and search for “Brother” look at the drivers selected and compare the version. Not forget that the Opensource and the closed-sourced drivers follow a different development path, so version numbers of opensource packages are not really comparable with closed-source packages.

Yes!! You are so right! I never thought about that!

The brother drivers have different numbers!

There are LPR and Cupswrapper driver both in rpm and deb Format.

Which do I need? Installation looks a bit difficult....

[dharmabm]

Yes!! You are so right! I never thought about that!

The brother drivers have different numbers!

There are LPR and Cupswrapper driver both in rpm and deb Format.

Which do I need? Installation looks a bit difficult....

ubuntu uses debs, you can probably just double click the file to install it. configuration is another matter, but shouldn't be too hard.

k

[h90]

Yes!! You are so right! I never thought about that!

The brother drivers have different numbers!

There are LPR and Cupswrapper driver both in rpm and deb Format.

Which do I need? Installation looks a bit difficult....

ubuntu uses debs, you can probably just double click the file to install it. configuration is another matter, but shouldn't be too hard.

k

OK good!

LPR or Cupswrapper or both? (what does LPR and Cupswrapper mean?)

[kebabbaro]

ubuntu uses debs, you can probably just double click the file to install it. configuration is another matter, but shouldn't be too hard.

OK good! LPR or Cupswrapper or both? (what does LPR and Cupswrapper mean?)

Post #7 has all the instructions ready for you.

Point no. 3 and 4 you must use the terminal, just go Applications>Accessories>Terminal, and copy and paste the command

Point no. 4 you must write the /path/to/your/downloaded/debfile.deb manually at the end of the command, one path for each of the deb files.

Enjoy your Linux

Edited October 21, 2010 by kebabbaro

[kebabbaro]

EDIT

Edited October 21, 2010 by kebabbaro

[h90]

ubuntu uses debs, you can probably just double click the file to install it. configuration is another matter, but shouldn't be too hard.

OK good! LPR or Cupswrapper or both? (what does LPR and Cupswrapper mean?)

Post #7 has all the instructions ready for you.

Point no. 3 and 4 you must use the terminal, just go Applications>Accessories>Terminal, and copy and paste the command

Point no. 4 you must write the /path/to/your/downloaded/debfile.deb manually at the end of the command, one path for each of the deb files.

Enjoy your Linux

It worked! Unfortunately Brother did not invest much time in this driver :-(

[Richard-BKK]

ubuntu uses debs, you can probably just double click the file to install it. configuration is another matter, but shouldn't be too hard.

OK good! LPR or Cupswrapper or both? (what does LPR and Cupswrapper mean?)

Post #7 has all the instructions ready for you.

Point no. 3 and 4 you must use the terminal, just go Applications>Accessories>Terminal, and copy and paste the command

Point no. 4 you must write the /path/to/your/downloaded/debfile.deb manually at the end of the command, one path for each of the deb files.

Enjoy your Linux

It worked! Unfortunately Brother did not invest much time in this driver :-(

Hmm the HL-2140 is not Brothers newest model, I'm a bit surprised that they sold them at all in Thailand. But all the surprises aside what is disappointing of the Brother driver?

[dave_boo]

The other good thing about Linux versus WIndows is that on Linux I get 220+ MB/s out of my SSD where as Win7 on the same laptop only gets 125-ish....

[h90]

The other good thing about Linux versus WIndows is that on Linux I get 220+ MB/s out of my SSD where as Win7 on the same laptop only gets 125-ish....

It seems my network is also getting faster with it.

[BugJackBaron]

A few months ago I switched completely from XP to Xubuntu 10.10 64 bit edition. This is Ubuntu with Xfce which is more or less a lightweight Gnome. I run it on a laptop.

I have found that it does some things better. In particular, torrents are problematic in XP if you use your laptop for a long time. This is a well known registry bug that is not present in Vista/win 7 but I didn't want to try those on my limited HD(80GB) ram(aGB) and cpu(centrino).

Everyhting works , even suspend/hibernate which is great. There is a great deal of flexibility - for example I can configure the touchpad sensitivity but in XP that was firmware set and could not be changed(I did a lot of research on this)

HOWEVER ..unfortunately much open source software is woefully buggy..the media player Parole is crap. Fortunately there are usually alternatives and I would recommend VLC as the choice for movie playback.

By the way, try Koffice if you don't like openoffice(which is now called libreoffice ) You don't need to install KDE to run it. Another good alterantive - but not free - is Softmaker.

Finally, if you really need Word or Excel and have reasonable ram, I would try to run them in virtualbox.

Edited November 14, 2010 by BugJackBaron

[h90]

A few months ago I switched completely from XP to Xubuntu 10.10 64 bit edition. This is Ubuntu with Xfce which is more or less a lightweight Gnome. I run it on a laptop.

I have found that it does some things better. In particular, torrents are problematic in XP if you use your laptop for a long time. This is a well known registry bug that is not present in Vista/win 7 but I didn't want to try those on my limited HD(80GB) ram(aGB) and cpu(centrino).

Everyhting works , even suspend/hibernate which is great. There is a great deal of flexibility - for example I can configure the touchpad sensitivity but in XP that was firmware set and could not be changed(I did a lot of research on this)

HOWEVER ..unfortunately much open source software is woefully buggy..the media player Parole is crap. Fortunately there are usually alternatives and I would recommend VLC as the choice for movie playback.

By the way, try Koffice if you don't like openoffice(which is now called libreoffice ) You don't need to install KDE to run it. Another good alterantive - but not free - is Softmaker.

Finally, if you really need Word or Excel and have reasonable ram, I would try to run them in virtualbox.

Well my final problems were that I don't have sound anymore and need to unmute every time I restart the computer over the terminal and my microphon is not working anymore. Both after an update.

Many times for a couple of seconds I can not use the internet. The printer driver are complete crap and open office is also bad.

so I have no choice than to switch to Win7. In many things I like the idea of linux and will try it again in one year but for now it is just not useable in the office.

[Richard-BKK]

Buying the latest Brother or Lexmark compatible "Linux" laser printer was probably a cheaper solution then going for MS Windows 7 and MS Office 20XX... plus all additional needed software, Antivirus --- Adobe tools to make it even comparable to what an average user on Ubuntu 10.10 using IBM Symphony office does for free...

Microsoft must love open-source, in the last 20 years all major enhancements, they borrowed from the open-source community.

P.S. I hate people who use illegal software, especially if they use it in a office environment, and call it better than Linux...

Edited November 16, 2010 by Richard-BKK