PDF vs Printers

[Jeffrey Tooker]

<<<-----Original Message-----
From: ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
[mailto:ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Bart Silverstrim
Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2008 4:43 PM
To: Ubuntu user technical support,not for general discussions
Subject: Re: PDF vs Printers



Jeffrey Tooker wrote:
> I am running Ubuntu 7.10 and the printer is a Lexmark Z31 on a paralell
> cable local to the machine.  
> 
> As I said in my previous post I am fighting my way through getting the
> printer up.  In some ways it is a good thing.  It will help me in learning
> what the system is all about.  It will get me away from Windows point and
> click and not understand what is actually happening in the machine. I am
> finding that Ubuntu is strong.  I have locked it up a number of times in
the
> passed few days and had to cut power and restart.  Ubuntu seems to come
back
> every time when re booted.  This is giving me confidence to work with my
> decicated Ubuntu machine.  I will not be afraid of locking it up and never
> getting it back.  I am begining to make sense of the file structure and
the
> folder names.  With more exposure it will make more sense.
> 
> Jeffrey Tooker 
> Paynes Creek Ca.

Okay...think I got this reformatted correctly.

Jeffrey-in quoting material, I'm not sure how you did it with your mail 
client, but don't put things under a "--".  The usual general "standard" 
is that a single line consisting of -- is preceding a signature line, so 
when I hit "reply" on that message your restating of the situation was 
completely wiped from the reply message.

Second...what are you doing that you're locking up the machine?

While you've had good luck with hard-rebooting, the fact is that no 
computer takes kindly to hard reboots when it's using a r-w filesystem. 
  The only one that could not be really hurt is a system running 
entirely from a liveboot CD, and you're always rolling the dice on 
filesystem corruption when you do that.

I've seen Linux lock up once in awhile, usually from something really 
really odd happening, but more often than not the "lockup" was actually 
the interface frozen, and changing to a virtual terminal or hopping in 
with secure shell to kill an errant process fixed the situation without 
a hard reboot.

If you really want to learn and goof around without hurting your 
installed system (if this is a system you use to also do real work on) 
you might want to concentrate some time on learning how to use VMWare 
Player or Server, and install a sandbox learning system for 
experimenting in.  While you may not learn as much about advanced 
graphics work in that sandbox you can still learn a lot about the OS and 
how it works at other levels without damaging your system.

Good luck with your self-guided study of your new system!

-Bart

-- 
ubuntu-users mailing list
ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users  >>>


Bart:

First my mail program is MS Outlook, not Outlook Express.  When I hit the
reply or reply to all I get no quote carrots along the side of the quoted
portion.  To this time it has not been a problem.  However now it seems to
need fixing.  Do you have any ideas?

Typical hard re boot today.  Was trying to get resolution changed on
monitor.  When I executed the chages on the change screen the screen went
black.  I waited about 10 minutes and nothing changed.  I cut power and
rebooted, the system came back up.  On the third try the change held and I
did not have to reboot.  I have Ubuntu on a seperate drive and no personal
files. I have "The Official Ubuntu Book" by Benjamin Mako Hill.  On some
topics it is a bit lacking.  How does one get out of a situation like the
above black screen without cutting power?  Is there an Ubuntu equivalent of
Windows "Control, Alt, Delete"?

I have set up a "No Real Work" computer to be my sand box.  I will connect
it online soon.  The machine I am writing from is a dual boot with Ubuntu on
a seperate HD.  Once the sand box machine is setup I will probably not boot
this one in Ubuntu untill I get a lot more competent with it.  The sand box
machine is a PIII 600MC CPU with a 40GB HD and no online or printer.  I can
reload it from the CD with a disk if I have to, and any data that I put into
it with a disk can be reloaded.  So it is my learning machine.

However your statement about the hard reboot interests me.  I think the hard
reboots have probably made the Ubuntu on the dual boot machine a bit
glitchy.  The operation of the OS is what I need to know about.  I will
never do anything very complicated with Ubuntu.  Most of what I do is email,
online searching, word processing and a few spreadsheets.  Please explain
about the sand box.  I thank you for your concern.

Jeffrey Tooker 
Paynes Creek Ca.