I blog regularly about the advantages of open source, so in a spirit of honesty I should also blog about some of the disadvantages. With our impending house move, I’ve been busy disposing of our old computer kit on Gumtree, and buying neater replacements – a laptop instead of a desktop, a compact printer instead of a big beast, etc. This has put me in the unusual (for me) position of owning technology which is new to the market.

This is where the fun starts. No manufacturer in their right mind would think of launching products without providing the necessary software to work with MS-Windows (and to a lesser extent Mac OS). However, Linux users have to rely on the kit getting into the hands of people who have the necessary skills to bring out new versions of drivers – or whatever is required to make things work.

So, my new laptop from Novatech looked good value for the price – and with the option to buy without paying a Microsoft tax. It’s my first experience of 64 bit computing – can’t say I really noticed any great difference – but Ubuntu 64bit Desktop Edition worked pretty well from the start, apart from the WiFi, Webcam, and microphone.

A bit of hunting on the Novatech Forums found solutions for the WiFi (build Realtek drivers from source) and microphone (a simple config setting). The solution for the Webcam (build UVC drivers from source) worked briefly once, but has not worked since. Curious.

The Epson Stylus SX515W printer was a similar story. MS-Windows users get a nice setup utility – Linux users have to enter IP addresses etc using cursor keys on the device itself (yes, that’s as tedious as it sounds). Ubuntu found the printer on the network – clever – and offered drivers for an Epson SX405, which seem to work ok for printing.

Getting the scanner to work was rather more difficult. A helpful person on the SANE developer mailing lists told me to use the latest drivers from the git repository, and after a little fiddling around I had a working scanner. As some of the ‘fiddling around’ meant removing the SANE libraries shipped with Ubuntu, this meant I then had to build a new xsane too.

So, my nice new toys are now all playing properly with my Ubuntu Linux system. However, it’s a long way from ‘plug and play’, requiring:

• a good internet connection (to find stuff out and then download a mass of development resources)
• willingness to try things out and not be afraid of breaking things (and knowing how to undo things if you do break them)
• some familiarity with building software – you’ll usually find someone helpful on a mailing list, but they will often give pointers rather than step by step instructions

Not something you’d expect the average Joe User to do. Manufacturers could make it all so much easier – this is particularly annoying from Epson, as their wretched printer actually runs Linux internally

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 7:49 pm and is filed under Open-source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.