I have an old Lexmark 3-in-one scanner/copier/printer and it’s been sitting on my desk collecting dust. I finally had a use for it today as I needed to scan something. I know that Lexmark printers are notorious for being unfriendly to Linux, so I did some searching before plugging the printer in.

Everywhere I looked showed that there is no scanning support for the Lexmark as they refuse to release any source code for their print drivers, and the only binaries they offer are for print functionality only.

Well I remembered that I had previously installed XSane (though for some reason I cannot remember why), so I figured I’d just mess around and see what happens.

I plugged in the Lexmark X1240 to my USB port and right away XSane kicked into gear! It gave me two options: eithe I just plugged in a camera or a scanner. Obviously it was the latter. I clicked scanner and bingo! I was in business! I hit scan and like magic it was done in no time!

The default file format is pnm so I just converted to png and I was done!

I’ll try to put pics up later.

The first Ubuntu user day is scheduled for January 23rd!

Check it out!

It is geared toward new/beginner users, but anyone is welcome to participate.

So my mom told me today that her Internet hasn’t been working since my sister was in town and disconnected her Ethernet cable and setup a wireless router and then put it all back to “normal”.

I’m not quite sure what caused the problem, but I went through the usual troubleshooting steps, including disconnecting the power from the cable modem, waiting 30-60 seconds, then powering it up to re-cycle it.

Once I booted up into Ubuntu 9.10 (yeah my mom is cool enough to run Linux) and tested out the connection. It appeared that network manager (nm) was somehow set to not manage networks by default anymore. So I did the following:


gksudo gedit /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf


Then I changed the settings to look like this:


[main]
plugins=ifupdown,keyfile

[ifupdown]
managed=true


(I changed managed from false to true… Then I restarted nm and tada! Worked just as good as before.

It still puzzles me how that got changed in the first place as my mom’s user account does not have admin permissions (I usually login remotely or stop by to visit to do any updates for her).

4yr old Logitech mouse (by Alex)

So I was looking for a book that I needed for a class (an old APA Manual) and came across my old (about 4 years old) Logitech Wireless Mouse. I do all of my school work upstairs in my “office” on my 17″ Acer laptop (running Ubuntu of course).

I plugged in the USB receiver and pushed the power button on the bottom of the mouse. The mouse worked just fine – as expected.

What surprised me (just a little bit) was that the extra buttons (it’s a 5 button mouse) worked instantly (no special setup needed). Click one and the browser page goes back one, click the other button and it goes forward… nice!

I also noticed that the side-scroll (tap the scroll wheel to the left or right) works not only in Firefox (tested by adjusting the window dimensions to force side scrolling necessity), but it also adjusts the volume on VLC  media player! I wonder what else this little baby can do!

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Ok now back to homework…

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(p.s. beat that windows haha)

If one of your goals/resolutions for this year is to finally give Ubuntu a try…
Or, if you’ve been using Ubuntu for a while, but still not getting the hang of it…
Or, if you just like free stuff…

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Check out the Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference by Keir Thomas, it’s Free (pdf download full version)!

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Or buy the hard copy for about $13 from Amazon.