Civil rights: another reason why open source is the way to go

This is not a big reason I use Ubuntu, or Linux, or even open source software in general, but it’s nice to note that the open source community tend to be very high-minded when it comes to civil rights issues.  To whit, one comment from an irc Ubuntu Classroom chat (all IDs removed to protect the innocent):

user1: It's gay.

... < a few irrelevant lines here > ...

user2: btw, stop using 'gay' as a negative please.

Not a heavy-handed admonition at all, but it’s simple, effective, and it helps to make the speaker (typer?) aware of unacceptable behavior.  For the record, I’ve also noticed similarly civic-minded ideals expressed in the Gentoo forums.

Thoughts on Thanksgiving

Things for which to be thankful:

1. My family are all rather entertaining.
2. I don’t have to travel with any of them again until at least next year.
3. The drive was only 10 hours each way and not longer, or number 1 would have to be marked off the list.

CD Burning made easy redux: your input needed

Brasero 0.5.1 has been packaged up and flung into the Ubuntu servers for inclusion in Feisty Fawn according to Mario Đanić. I had previously posted that an older version is available in Edgy, but it appears Mario is at work to get it into Edgy Backports. (You go, Mario!)

If you haven’t tried Brasero, give it a shot soon. It’s nice, even as a very early release. By the time it hits a 1.0, it will likely be quite usable, and even be some competition for K3B. Other distros take note: Ubuntu is going to be ahead of the curve on this one.

Here’s the part where you come in. Mario wants input on exactly how the Beagle (as in searching) dependency can be addressed. I’m personally in favor of leaving the daemon as a “Suggest,” but then again I already have the daemon running. I guess my feeling is that anybody who really wants Beagle functionality will figure out how to install it; leave everybody else alone.

So what’s your feeling? Head on over to pykix.net and sound off.

Update on Splix

After much cajoling and tweaking, I finally got Splix to compile. Unfortunately, I forgot to post such information here. In the meantime, the project developer found my previous post and posted this comment about it.

To begin, I have to say that after doing all that damned work to get Splix to work, it works extremely well. It supplies both excellent PPDs (which support more of my ML-2250’s features than Samsung’s own driver) and a rastertospl2 filter, both without needing any special version of lpd, which is what really sets Splix apart from Samsung’s product. Since Splix only deals with printing, you’re not going to be using Splix if you have an all-in-one, but I noticed that the author has recently added support for Samsung’s color printers.

Frustrations with Splix on Ubuntu Edgy

I finally got around to compiling Splix, which is a free, open source driver for my SPL II Samsung ML-2250 printer.  Basically, in addition to the normal stuff you need to compile software, you’ll also need the CUPS Driver Development Kit (be sure to get the SVN version, as the released version won’t work on current versions of CUPS running on current distros).  You’ll also need the CUPS development packages.  On Ubuntu this is apparently about as far as you’ll get until you rip out and replace CUPS as well.

It turns out that the Debian testing package of libcupsys2-dev doesn’t contain the file libcups.a, and therefore the Ubuntu Edgy package of the same name doesn’t contain that file.  Debian unstable and Debian stable both have libcups.a, for some completely inexplicable reason.  No idea why the developers ripped out that one file, or if it was just missing from that day’s download of CUPS.

In either case, I’ll post more later about my continuing adventures in getting Splix to work on Ubuntu.  For now I need some time away from this stuff and some chocolate.  Chocolate cures all ills.