Installing a Brother HL-1222WE printer on Linux (Fedora)

I hoped I left printing and wasting paper behind me long ago, but here the COVID quarantine and online school (my daughter is first grade) forced me to buy a printer.

A bit of market research for a home printer pointed me to Brother HL-1222WE, the main pros were:

• relatively cheap price for a laser printer with wireless connectivity;
• cheap consumables, replacement toner cartridges are available (and I uderstand you can even refill them yourself);
• no chip on the cartridge
• easy to install on Linux (beforehand I read you need some proprietary drivers from the manufacurer)

So, with the printer in hand I connected it (via USB) to my Fedora desktop. It was recognized and the installation went smoothly click-click-click using the available Open Source drivers. Then tried wirelessly on the laptop, equally smooth. Below are a few screenshots for illustrative purpose:

To be fair, you can install the same with a few clicks and available drivers on Windows too. Only for the Android phone I installed some app from the manufacturer.

One thing to note: before installed on my Linux machine, the printer was already installed on a Windows PC, so its wireless setup (picking from a list the access point name) was done there. Not sure if the wizard for wireless setup would include that and I am too lazy to reset the settings only to try it now.

Update: If you think you may need the proprietary drivers for stuff like monitoring the toner level, it is not the case, you can use the web interface:

W8 for desktop

It was a long needed upgrade, so we finally replaced my girlfriend's laptop: it has a 17" display, since is going to be used mostly for photo management and editing (her favorite for this task is a Windows app, ACDSee with the plan to move to Lightroom "at some point", in the rare case photo surgery is needed, I keep my line: "GIMP is what I know and what I can teach you") ant it is a n-SERIES Dell which I suggested as I wanted to play with different distros (my other computers are a 5years old desktop and a netbook), get outside my comfort area (GNOME 2/Xfce on Fedora), see what works for me and what don't: is Mint usable, what's the deal with Cinnamon, can I live with Debian, how KDE evolved and such.

I can't really say how it happened, but at some point I installed the Windows 8 Consumer Preview - something I always avoided, as it comes from the same moronic design as GNOME Shell and Unity and... guess what? I kind of dig it, is not at horrifying as expected, I think I found my new desktop and will use it for a while. With Windows builds of GIMP, Inkscape, Pidgin, VLC, Thunderbird and Firefox on top, of course. Not sure what about video editing, but will cross that bridge when I will get there.

Sad panda, happy panda

This wek-end, when shooting cars & stuff (there was a drift competition in the parking lot of a mall) I stumbled upon those toys and decided I must have a piece too, as Pandas are kind of a sacred animal in Fedora-land, so they are sitting now right next to my computer.

PS: no plastic toy was hurt during this shooting, all the possible perceived sadness is due to GIMP alterations.

GIMP on N900

Nokia N900 looks like the most awesome phone you can buy from a FLOSS point of view, but I wasn't impressed so far from what I read about it, the phone is priced way over my price range and is too big for my pockets (I don't need full keyboards and so). However, after reading a blog post about running GIMP on the N900, my views changed a bit, now I would like such a device (it would not be far fetched to say I crave for one), but the price is still to big. Make the price 2/3 and I'll get one (make it half the price, and the money got out of my pocket a couple of hour ago :D)

Speaking of phones, my current one is a Nokia from the S40 line and is almost 4 years old, it barely hold ans is in need for a replacement. Replacement with what? Not sure, but I wish with something running Linux... I thought about something with Android, there are some entry-level devices which can become affordable if you hunt for a good deal/supplier, but except Nexus One all the Android devices are tied with old versions of the operating system, you can't install the latest upstream software, and that's uncool and not geeky. Nexus One is not available and in the same price range with N900. And it can't run GIMP anyway :D

ffmpeg2theora

Playing with my new video camera toy, I try to transcode all the clips from h.264/AAC .MOV to Theora using ffmpeg2theora with its default settings, however I find the size of the resulting file unpredictable: my first clip was filmed inside and was very short, so after the transcode the file size shrinked from ~24MB to 3MB. Excited by this, I tried the same transcoding with a large clip, filmed outside but much to my disappointment, the result was an expansion from ~421MB to ~570MB. Finally, a video of the fish tank shrinked from ~118MB to ~62MB. I can't see any pattern here, what I am supposed to to when uploading the next clip to something like YouTube? (I want the shortest upload time)

Camera firmware upgrade

I found compelling the image quality/camera price when I saw Mo recent awesome 5 Fun things in Fedora 12 video and considering some opportunities to record useful stuff in the near future, is spite of the lackluster editing FLOSS tools, I bought one too. Yay! me haz a new toy! (a Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera)

Well, the firmware in the camera was quite old (1.03, versus the current 1.06), so I proceeded to a firmware upgrade. Here is the story:

First, go to the manufacturer's website. It will identify the operating system (sort of, Unix, instead of Linux) and lie about not having any update for you:

If the site lies to me, then I can lie to it too, so I pretend I am using Windows XP. Suddenly, a download is available, grab it:

The download is an .exe, but you don't need to use Wine, Nautilus is clever about that, detects a ZIP self-extractor and open it with File Roller. Copy the files on the memory card:

Then read the steps intended for Windows:

Put the card containing the firmware update files back in the camera and fire it up. When asked, confirm the update:

Now all is well, the device is up to date with the internal software:

Delete the files form the card, they are not needed any more and go on with your life, it was another happy day far from Windows. Find something interesting to film... more than you just goofing around with your new tow.

Digital painting

When Mo was enthusiastic about tablet improvements in Fedora 12, this made me dust-off my own device, but only a few days later when Kaio pointed to the small and awesome MyPaint I got hooked, liking a lot how it feels like real drawing/painting.

And my first drawing with it, my first digital painting ever, is something I think is not entirely bad:

Speaking about graphic applications, I found somewhat funny (and somewhat sad) to see how Ubuntu is again following Fedora's footsteps, this time by removing GIMP, with a similar line of reasoning ("we" wanted to free space on the Desktop Spin for more apps and ended with a 650MB .iso and 50MB is unused space). At least they got Slashdot headlines with this move and somewhat compensated our own negative PackageKit headlines (wait a bit to see the headlines when they will follow with the PackageKit thing too).

PS: thumbs-up for doing at last (post-release) the right thing with PackageKit in F12.

Better webcam support

One of the features listed at every Fedora release is Better Webcam Support and as it does not sound very sexy, it tends to get overlooked, I don't think I mention it myself when translating a summary of the features in a new release. Shame on me.

More than one year ago I got a "free" cheap and poor webcam (read 'crappy', powered by the sn9c20x chipset)- it was thrown by the store at a bonus when purchasing something (IIRC a scanner). My frustration with grew fast and large, wasn't able to make it work on Linux, so I just gave it away to a colleague to use it with Yahoo Messenger on Windows.

Fast forward today, the webcam returned to me and on a whim I said to myself "what will happen it I plug it into my newly installed Fedora 12 Beta?"

Pleasant surprise: it worked! Sure, not the best image quality (the camera is cheap and not new any more), but I don't really need it for anything.

So yes, there are things to complain in F12, but also there are a lot of enjoyable parts.

729/65535

Is Friday afternoon, and I don't feel like working, not even writing the Design beat for FWN, where I think I will wait a couple more dayd to gather more content, so while thinking at the opportunities of taking photos in the next week-end at Bucharest Days I can continue my X/65535 mock project (I know we don't mind) with a second take, playing with a funny guy gift I received a couple of days ago (I blackened his shirt and draw a beard with a marker) and a small bottle of Ouzo brought by a co-worker who returned from a vacancy in Greece.

My drive is failing... or not

The recent, informative recent post by davidz about the new storage handling in GNOME helped me a lot in understanding the error message that scared the shit out of me when trying Fedora 11 Preview (with a LiveUSB) on my Eee PC.

It was instant panic when I saw it, so obviously I was in a hurry to see the details:



There is an one single error: the hard drive temperature at around 50°C and I calmed down a bit. Later searched a bit on Google and it looks like this is an usual hard drive temperature for netbooks, where the ventilation is limited. Pretty much like a scary false alarm (but maybe I am just ignorant here).



Overall, the application could be, IMO, better worded: even the item passing the test (green dots) are labeled "Pre-fail" making you feel something bad is going to happen.



I don't know, maybe this is a philosophical view: anything living is going to die and anything working is going to fail, life is pre-death and working is pre-fail.

And the sword shall be named...

For a long time I was thinking about getting myself a sword but this was mostly like a dream, something that I thought it may be cool to do "sometime". Until recently, when pretending I can use it as prop for some interesting photography, I went forward and bought one.

It is an Agincourt replica sword, but it is real, battle-ready, made from good steel and having sharp edges: when planning and making the photos I want the real feeling, not toying with cheap plastic.

Now to the priorities: the first step (getting the sword) is done, I moved the part about taking the cool photos somewhere in the future (maybe step 3) and introduced a second step, naming the sword - any cool sword has to have a name.

For a long time I thought the name of a cool, magical sword has to include a part about flames, like Burning sword of doom or Flaming sword of retribution but looking at it (I liked it so), silvery, simple and pure, I think something like Vengeful moon ray (long Moon ray of vengeance) would be more appropriate. Ideas? Opinions? I'm open, please help me with your valuable comments.

Ideally the step 2 would be followed by an intermediary 2.1 step, translating the name in Elvish, but I don't think I will have much success with that, a Google search does not reveal good automatic translations from English to Elvish.

PS: the sword is an European medieval model, made by a Taiwanese manufacturer imitating traditional Japanese technology and using Swedish steel, so I pretty much doubt it can release a bankai but I am sure due to my lack of reiatsu will never get a definitive answer about that.

People shoot people

Earlier today, talking with Kushal in #fedora-art about photography he said a phrase which rang a bell in my head "I shoot people" and made me to try a few T-shirt designs on that theme (follow the links for the SVG sources and a large view):

Now, as always, I am undecided, can't say which is my one choice, the "I shoot people" design (in two variants) or the "cameras don't shoot people, people shoot people" design. Opinions? Until now the feedback I received for the first design is 50-50.

I made the sources available so anyone cam make his own, with his own modifications (for example I plan to add my website URL or my own), at whatever price or quality he want. But for the lazy ones, I put together a small shop at Cafepress (I won't use that for myself, is not an option due to its shipping prices).

Wild photographer on the loose at FUDCon

This little guy is on the loose, he stole my camera and is taking nasty photos all around at FUDCon, I am left onlu with my phone... But I'll catch him!

Going to FUDCon

The First Meet-up of the Art Team

As both Martin and me will be present, we probably will pompously claim the first meet-up of the Fedora Art Team (Mo suggested the title): probably the first time when two active members of the Art Team will be in the same room, so join us if you are interested, this will take place most likely Saturday and we plan to keep a session about Fedora Art (F-10 themes, Echo, Nodoka, Art Team in general).

Me and the hackfest

I plan to act as a mobile hackergotchi creation station: if you want a hew hackergotchi, look for me, I will take a photo and then gimp it. I also plan to work on an unnamed surprise (a special edition of something). What I won't do (due to uncooperative hardware, but I wish I could do) is take footage for an I am Fedora video.

Here is my almost ready gear (expect plenty of photos from me):
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Woeees

After a couple of days with it, I think my main woe with the Eee and Fedora (bigger than the wireless) is Inkscape on small screens and this is a problem I knew before the purchase (testing Inkscape on my desktop on 800x600) and a problem which is not directly related to Eee, it can be found on any small display:

The small problem is the lack of vertical space, the main toolbar has fixed height and is too high, you can't access the color swatch at the bottom or the useful tools in the status bar. The bigger problem is that the maximized window do not fill (horizontally) the screen. You have to unmaximize it and resize manually. And do this each time you start the application, as it does not remember the window geometry.

Eee...

Here is my brand new Eee PC 1000h running a [pretty much] standard Fedora 10 Alpha install (only the graphics are changed: Echo icons and a Gears wallpaper):

After a quick testing of F9 and F10 Alpha I settled on F10, it ia a bit friendly with the hardware (no need to modprobe uvcvideo and at least the wired network card works).

Pink - or how (not) to sell computers

I started to crave for a recently released ultraportable notebook (a certain model), thinking seriously about buying one. What's the problem? The local sale strategy.
I won't complain about the global strategy (even if there is enough room to complain: only a Windows version is available, to be followed only after a couple of months by the Linux counterpart, which will be underpowered - less RAM an poorer battery).

My complaint is about local sales: all the stores offer only the pink version (rumours say black and white are supposed to be available in a couple of weeks). Like they want to get rid of the unwanted stock. Stupid move, who want to be seen in public using a pink laptop? They should have manufactured less units in this color.

And a second complaint: almost all sellers are giving a crappy 1GB MP3 player as "gift" with the purchase. Except one seller (which does not have any in stock), which has a lower price. Hoe lower exactly? With the MP3 player's price, so the "gift" is another way to get rid of an undesired product (you know, like I was a kid, under the communist regime and when you wanted to buy food were forced to also buy some undesired crap and help the store to report exceeding "the plan").

Linux is everywhere: even on phones

Recently someone asked me to help him with the configuration (it was absolutely painless) of a cordless Internet/ DECT phone, VOIP841. Is a nice, even if a bit pricey IMO, phone made by Philips, able to call land lines, Skype network (without the need of a PC), use multiple handsets (and have calls between those handsets too)... but enough with the praises, I am not a Philips sales agent.
What I liked the most is that phone runs Linux (I noticed this seeing "Open Source File" on their download page. Cool stuff, Linux is everywhere!

note: and the guy owning it (he bought it by himself and is happy with it) looks funny at me when I mention using Linux...