I started assembling a new computer with one mission in mind.  To prove to myself and my audience that I could assemble a PC that would have the functionality found on a Windows system without paying for any Microsoft software or products.  The aim here is to not directly load or pay for any Microsoft products.  That doesn’t mean that a Microsoft product will not somehow be on my system, it will, but it will be a freebee and I will not have given Microsoft any direct revenue for the software.

This mission has led to the “Building a Computer” section of this blog, and that section has progressed to the point where all the hardware is running and we are ready to load software.

We have come to a crossroads.  If you just wanted to build your own computer, and load the latest Microsoft Operating System, like Windows 7, along with Microsoft Office, etc. more power to you.  We wish you well, and see you on your way.

If you are interested in loading a free operating system, like Ubuntu, then keep reading, that’s what this blog is all about.  Goodbye, Microsoft, Hello Open Soruce software.  Let’s get started.

There are a couple of different license types for Open Source Software, but basically, if it’s Open Source, you can go ahead and download it, and use it on your computer for free.  It’s free for private use and it’s free for commercial use.  There are no license fees, no one to notify when you download and use the software, and no license police out to see if you have paid for the current copy of the license.  Have at it and enjoy.

Now this begs several questions.  Why would anyone give software away that they’ve created?   Marketing software for sale takes quite a bit of revenue and effort.  As soon as you become successful, then big brother will come along with a competing product, and with big brothers marketing muscle, your out of business.

In fact, there is a business model for open source software and a way to make money for developers.  Usually a robust, free version is given away, and a pro version is sold with additional features.  Adobe pioneered this method.  Also commercial customers want support from developers, and are willing to pay for that support.

Isn’t free software shoddy, not up to commercial standards?  Your in for a shock, but a lot of Open Source Software is just as good and in some instance better than commercial versions.  Why? Because, some developers just like developing an application to see if they can do better than any other product on the market.  Sometimes it’s not just one developer, but several with a common mission.  The developers are in it for the love of building good software, and for the most part they do an excellent job.  They know if you don’t like it, your going to delete it and not use it.

What can I expect when downloading open source software?  You can expect high quality software, with very few bugs, good install programs, and with all the bells and whistles of the commercial equivalent software.  A lot of times this will run on all operating systems.  Some of this software was developed by major corporations, like Sun, who developed Open Office and gave it to the public as a way to diminish Microsoft Office.

What are the drawbacks from using Open Source Software?  Well. just like any commercial software you would buy, don’t expect Open Source Software to do things exactly like, and have the same exact look, as the leading commercial version.  The controls may be slightly different, or in a different place, or the menus are slightly different in wording or placement.  If your developing competing software you want to make it slightly different, and have more or better functionality.  Now having said all that you’ll find Open Office is very close to Microsoft Office in the way you interact with the software.

Free software has been around since 1983, that’s 26 years, a long time.  Some of the open source software has had a decade or more put into its development, so you can expect non-trivial, high quality software that will have the good functionality.

So with this intro.  What were going to be doing with this software installation is loading Open Source software.  Our goal is to have a computer system that will have the functionality of a Microsoft based system with out any of the cost.  Let’s see how close we can come.

The operating system we’re going to load is Ubuntu 9.10.  It was just released last Friday.  Ubuntu is a version of Linux.  Linux is an open source operating system,  many people have taken Linux and changed it to suit their needs.  There are a lot of different versions of Linux, one of which is the Apple operating system.  The different versions of Linux are called “distros.”  We talked about this in another post.

I choose Ubuntu, because it is one of the most popular distros out there, they are committed to making an operating system that competes with Microsoft, and finally they have a strict update schedule of a new release every six months, which means they are committed to continuously improving their software.

Before we load Ubuntu we want our own CD of the operating system.  The operating system installs from the CD.  It currently takes 690 Mb of space.  There are two ways to obtain the Ubuntu CD.  You can ask Ubuntu for it, and they will send you a disk, or if you’re like me, and can’t wait, you can make your own disk.  Let’s walk through creating your own disk.

Go to the Ubuntu web site at http://www.ubuntu.com/.  Click on the Download block, which will take you to the download page.  We are going to follow the directions on this page.

Click on the Begin Download Desktop 9.10 (32-bit), select your location, and start your 690 Mb download.  It will take a while depending on your connection.  This downloads a compressed file with an .iso extension.  Do not load the Windows Installer version, which is made to install over top of a Windows installation.

After you download the .iso file, you’ll need a CD disk burning software that will burn an .iso file. An iso file is an archive of a disk image, which is what we want to end up with.  Windows Media will not do that.  I recommend downloading the open source .iso burner recommended on the Ubuntu site, called  InfraRecorder.  To get this in Step 2. of the Ubuntu site, click on “How to Burn a CD Image.“  Scan down the page until you come to the operating system your using to obtain the .iso image.  Click on  InfraRecorder to download and install it.  After InfraRecorder is installed go bak to this page and follow the directions for your operating system.

After the CD is complete, were just about ready to load the operating system.  To check the CD, put it in the DVD drive you used to obtain the iso image, and reboot your computer.  The CD is set up so you can boot the Ubuntu operating system from the CD.  If Ubuntu comes up on the computer, the CD is ok.  Do not click “Install Ubuntu” on the Ubuntu desktop.  We’ll do that on the computer you built.

If you’d like to look around the Ubuntu desktop before hand, feel free to look around.  We’ll get into the operating system itself later.  When your done, take the disk out of the DVD drive, and reboot your computer to get back to your other operating system.   You may also want to tour the Ubuntu Features here.

First off, an operating system is responsible for running the underlying programs that make all the applications on your computer operational.  It connects you to the Internet, makes your mouse and keyboard functional, stores your programs and data on your hard drive and reads the hard drive into memory.  In short, it runs all the hardware and software in your computer.

It might seem like it, but Windows does not make the only operating system that runs computer hardware.  Apple makes a pretty good operating system, which is Linux based.   Linux is a darn good operating system that comes in several different varieties, called distros.  Ubuntu is one of those distros, there is also Fedora, SuSE, Slackware, and Red Hat, to name a few.

Ubuntu has the reputation of having the most people friendly interface.  The closest replacement for Windows.  Ubuntu has a release every six months and are continually improving the distro to make it easy to use and install.  Linux has traditionally been an operating system for geeks.  Ubuntu’s approach is similiar to Microsofts,  that is to build an operating system that is easy to use for non-technical users.

Ubuntu is free.  Ubuntu also has good documentation and support.  It contains all the applications you need: a web browser, email, an office suite, multimedia apps, instant messaging and more.

In short, everything you need from an operating system, along with a bunch of free application software, internet connectivity and email.   It installs in less time than windows.  You don’t have to put a license number in and get in touch with Microsoft to get up and running, and it’s stable, and secure.

The drawback, it’s not Windows.  What do I mean, well there is a slight learning curve since it’s not Windows.  If your open to learning a slightly different way of doing the same thing you do in Windows, Ubuntu may be for you.

To download Ubuntu go to:  http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download , select a site, begin your download, save it to you hard drive, and go get a cup of coffee.  At the moment the current distribution runs 690 Mb.  Expect it will take a little bit of time to download depending on your connection.

Ubuntu downloads in an .ISO format also known as a disc image which includes all the files and file metadata in one file.  To load Ubuntu, we will need to burn this downloaded .ISO file  to a CD, that it can be read in a DVD/CD drive.  This creates a small problem.  Your popular DVD/CD burners do not support creating a CD from an .ISO file.

To burn the .ISO to a CD, Ubuntu recommends downloading an ISO burner program called, InfraRecorder, for free from: http://infrarecorder.org/?page_id=5 Download InfraRecorder and install it on your system.

The first gotcha to look out for is one that got me.  We are going to burn the 690 MB image to a CD, NOT a DVD.  What happens if you burn to a DVD is the burn may go too fast, and skip some things in the .ISO file.  The result is a corrupted disk.  When you go to Install Ubuntu, an error message something like: “Loading isolinux: Disk error 32, AX = 4222, drive 9F  Boot Failed” may appear, which will leave you scratching your head.

The solution is to use a CD, not a DVD.  Make sure the CD you put in the drive to burn can store 690 Mb of data.  Put the CD in your drive and start infraRecorder.  InfraRecorder will start and a bunch of disks will come up in a visual menu on the main screen, ignore them, and go to the top menu; select  Actions>Burn Image.  Find and select your .ISO image and click OK.  Screen shots for each operating system to show you the step by step process of using IsoRecorder are located here:  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto

Burning the image will take some time, so go get another cup of coffee.  Get out a marker pen for the CD and label the disk, “Ubuntu 9.10.”  Your done.  You now have a bootable CD disk that will load the Ubuntu Operating system on your computer.  We will cover that in our next article.

Let’s get started.  Put your Ubuntu CD in the cd drive, with your bios set up to boot from CD.   The first screen that will come up will ask you what language you would like to use; then the initial menu screen will appear .  First, I would recommend that you “Check the disk for defects.”  This will check your cd to make sure the disk is clean and has everything needed to load the operating system.  If you remember my last post, if the disk is corrupted, you could get an error message that you will not relate to the disk.

Ubuntu Start Up Menu

Before going further, if you would like Ubuntu to install your Internet connection during install, plug an Ethernet cable connected to the Internet into the back of your computer.

After checking the disk, you can select “Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer.”  This will load the operating system into your memory from the CD without loading it on your hard drive.  If you go this route, once the operating system loads, the Ubuntu desktop will have an icon on it to install Ubuntu.  Click on the “Install Ubuntu” icon on the desktop to start the install to your hard drive.  Or, you can select “Install Ubuntu” from the CD menu, and go directly to loading Ubuntu to your hard drive.

Installing Ubuntu: the first screen will ask you to select your language, and click Forward.  Next you’ll set your computer time zone, and then your keyboard.  You can just click the “Suggested option: “USA,”  and test your keyboard in the bottom part of the window.

If your building your computer from scratch, you’ll get a screen to allow you to use the entire disk, or partition the disk.   Without a previous operating system,  the installation is easy, select “Use the Entire Disk.”   The disk will be formatted with the “ext4″ file system, which is new with this release, the old file system was called “ext3.”  In contrast, windows file system is called, “NTFS.”   I recommend giving an entire disk to Ubuntu, rather than partitioning part of a disk, even if you decide to dual boot.

If you already have an operating system on your computer, you’ll get the disk partitioning screen with some choices.  You can: dual boot the operating system, erase the operating system and use the entire disk, use the largest continuous free disk space as a partition, or partition the disk manually.

The only reason to partition a part of the disk is if you want to dual boot with Windows.  I personally don’t care for dual booting.  If you want to learn to use Ubuntu, dedicate yourself to doing that, use one computer for Windows and another computer for Ubuntu.  You can use the same monitor, mouse, and keyboard with a KVM switch.  You won’t have to mess with partitioning your disk, and every time you start your computer, you won’t have to select which operating system you want to use.  Ubuntu will load smoother and quicker, and you’ll be much happier.  In the end, you’ll have Ubuntu set up just like your Windows computer, you’ll have two computers both fully operational, and you’ll have learned to use Ubuntu.  Bye, bye, Microsoft.  Let’s continue.

We come to the username and password screen.   Fill in your name, the name that will appear in the log in window, and your password twice.  Give your computer a unique name for use with a network or future network.  If several people are using your computer, you probably want to require a password to log in to the computer, if it’s just you, select “Log in automatically,” and the computer will start without a password.

The next screen reviews the installation.  There is an advanced button for installing the boot loader to another disk like a USB jump drive.  I do not recommend doing this until you become a little more familiar with Ubuntu.

Click Install and we’re off.  After about 10-15 minutes you will get a reboot screen.  Reboot the computer, remove the CD, and watch Ubuntu load, put in your password, if applicable, and welcome to the Ubuntu desktop.  We’ll talk about that in our next post.

]]> http://www.geekgumbo.com/2009/12/27/installing-ubuntu-9-10/feed/ 4 http://www.geekgumbo.com/2009/12/30/the-ubuntu-desktop-an-introduction/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-ubuntu-desktop-an-introduction http://www.geekgumbo.com/2009/12/30/the-ubuntu-desktop-an-introduction/#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2009 03:30:48 +0000 dale http://www.geekgumbo.com/?p=606 Before delving into the Ubuntu Desktop, let’s go over some general concepts that will lay a foundation for things to come.  Let’s start with Open System Software.  Open System Software is high quality software, and free.  It is written by a dedicated, caring, group of developers.  The software is continually improved, leading, sometimes, to frequent updates, which adds  new features, and bug fixes.  You’ll sometimes find several different programs for the same application, as each group of developers endorse a different design philosopy, trying to create the best possible product.

This is one of the reasons that the Linux operating system has not had the mass appeal that Windows has experienced.  You’ll notice Microsoft only comes out with one version of Windows at a time.  In contrast, there are many different versions of Linux available, called distros, as each development team tries to create an operating system that addresses their particular specialized needs, whether for scientific users, internet server needs, or desktop users.  Ubuntu, is the most popular desktop distro of Linux, mostly because the makers of Ubuntu are dedicated to making a distro for the desktop user that is easy to use, and continually improving their product by releasing a new version of Ubuntu every six months.

Because using an operating system from the command line is not user friendly to the non technical user, graphical user interfaces, GUI’s, were developed as applications the are run on top of the operating system that makes using your computer easier.  Windows is a good example of a graphical user interface that for a long time ran on top of the DOS operating system, and the Ubuntu Desktop is another.  In each of these applications, you can get to the command line of the operating system, and operate the computer that way, but of course, the GUI is easier.

Just like with the distros, there are several GUI’s available for Linux.  The two leaders are, KDE and Gnome, each has a slightly different feel and desktop arrangement, and are about equal in functionality.  Ubuntu 9.10 uses the Gnome version 2.28 graphical user interface, here after known as the Ubuntu Desktop.

The Ubuntu Desktop

You’ll find the Ubuntu desktop has the same functionality as the Windows desktop, however, the Ubuntu Desktop is not Windows. What I mean is you’ll find that the Ubuntu Desktop has the same functionality as Windows, but the two desktops are implemented differently with different menu names, menu layout, and commands, as they should be, their different GUI’s.  I personnally think the Ubuntu desktop is laid out better than Windows.  In other words, there is a learning curve as you learn how to drive a new interface, the Ubuntu Desktop.  Once you learn how to drive, you might not want to go back.

There are some similarities and outright borrowing from Windows.  All the applications use the same three symbols, the _ to minimize the window, the box to maximize the window, and the X to exit the application in the upper right corner of the application taskbar, just like Windows uses.  The Ubuntu desktop, just like Windows, makes use of the right mouse button.

Every thing on the Ubuntu Desktop is movable, if you don’t like where an icon is you can move it.  This is done with the right mouse button.  You can lock an icon to its position on the desktop, or remove it completely, and you can add icons to the desktop by clicking, “Add to Panel.”  A little caution here, I want  to make sure you know what the right mouse menu is when you encounter it.  I do not recommend reconfiguring or removing anything from your desktop at this time.

Icons and menus are initially located in each of the four corners with most being in the top task bar, as opposed to windows putting icons in the bottom task bar.  We’ll go over each of these icons and menus in later posts, unitl then, the first thing every one wants to know is how do I shut off the computer.  The upper right corner has an icon that looks like a power button with your name next to it, give it a left mouse click.  There you’ll find the Switch User, Log Out, Restart, and Shutdown with a couple of other choices.  Hmmm…looks suspiciously like what you find in Windows, except Windows takes three mouse clicks to turn off your system, Ubuntu only two.  I think you’ll find that Ubuntu is a lot quicker turning off the computer than Windows ever was.

The Application Menu & Accessories Category

I think you’ll find the menus are laid out much better than the Windows layout.  The menu applet contains three menus, and you can customize your own menu if you like.  The first menu, the Applications menu, provides easy access to every program installed on your computer.  The menu is laid out a little different than Windows, because menus are grouped into categories: Accessories, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office, Sound and Video, and the Ubuntu Software Center.  If you run through each of these sub menus you’ll find that Ubuntu provides you with a lot of applications when you first load your operating system.

The Ubuntu Software Center

The last choice on the Applications Menu, the Ubuntu Software Center, is a little like Windows “Add & Remove” programs only laid out a tad better with more functionality.  The Software Center tracks all installed programs, let’s you remove them, locates free software on the internet that will run with Ubuntu, and installs the program of your choice on your system, installing the program in a category in your Applications Menu with an icon, program name, and brief description of the program, nice.  What’s nice is that you don’t have to go looking for a download site, download the file, unzip it, and install it, the Software Center takes care of all of that for you.  You can go ahead and open all of these initial Ubuntu programs and check them out, to shut a program down, click the X in the upper right corner of the application, just like in Windows.  I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the functionality that Ubuntu provides with the operating system.

THe Places Menu

The Places menu is like Windows, My Documents, Explorer, and recent Documents all-in-ome.  This is where you can find all your files on your computer.  All of your music, video, documents, and other data are stored in the Places folders and are easily available to you.  This is your files system, places on your computer where your data is stored.  Double click on any folder and an explorer like windows opens to show you the files in your folder.  Want to move a file to a different folder, click on it and drag it to the new folder.  Want to make a new folder, right click, like in Windows.

The Systems Menu is like the Windows Control Panel and Device Manager, in it you can change the appearance of your desktop, configure your system, install printers, networks, drivers, and run various system utilities.

The Systems Menu and Update Manager

One program I want to have you run right now is under Administration->Update Manager.  This program keeps all the software on your system up to date.  Click “Check”, put in your password, and let the program go to work.  When I initially installed Ubuntu, I had 41 things that needed updating, let the program run and do it’s job. Presto your system is updated.

Icons, like icons in Windows, are used to launch or start programs.  You should find the help icon and probably the firefox icon in the top panel.  You can add more icons by right click->Add to Panel, find the program you want to put on the top bar your done.  When I initially loaded Ubuntu I was playing with the desktop and had all my menus disappear.  If this happens to you, don’t panic, go to the top panel, right click, Add to Panel->Main Menu.  You can also add your own custom menu.  I did say every thing on the desktop could be moved, if you don’t like where the icons are, move them by unlocking the “Lock to Panel” in the right click menu for each item and then drag the icon to a new location and lock it again.   The other icons toward the right in the top panel are for: sound with a volume control, networking with information about your network connection, and empathy and email applet that you can use to set up your emails.

This brings us to the date and time.  Right click and you can copy time and date to place in your documents, left click and you’ll see a calendar with a day/night clock which allows you to edit date and time and put locations on the world map.  When you put in a location in the world, a clock will appear below the day/night clock showing the time at that location.  To close this application, you’ll have to click on the top icon again. This is much better than the Windows calendar and clock set up.  The last icon in the top panel with your name allows you to turn off your computer.

The next main section below the top panel is the desktop.  The desktop is like the Windows desktop, it can contain files, folders, and icons to start applications.  You can create a new folder, document, or launcher, an icon to start a program.

The bottom panel starting from the left, has a desktop swithching applet, if you click on it you’ll switch between your open windows and another desktop.  A desktop is the same as the main section described in the last paragraph, only you can have as many desktops as you want. In each desktop you can have a series of open applications which will appear as tabs in the bottom panel just like in Windows.  A desktop for your spreadsheet, one for email, one for playing a game. If you look over to the right on the bottom panel you will see desktop icons.  Each icon is one of your desktops.  Click on them to switch to a specific desktop.

The Trash Folder

The final icon on the far left is your trash folder.  It operates just like the Windows trash folder, in that a deleted file will not be removed from the system, until you specifically “Empty Trash.”  If you click on the trash icon you will open an explorer window showing your trash folder.

I think you can see from this overview that the Ubuntu Desktop has everything you need to take charge of your computer.  As I mentioned earlier, I think the layout is easier to use and more understandable then Windows ever was.

What most people, who have not tried Ubuntu, don’t know is that Ubuntu comes with a bunch of free applications that load with the operating system. Let’s briefly go over these applications, as a way to show you that you have a complete computer when you load Ubuntu.

Email: Ubuntu has an email program called Evolution.  Evolution is more than just an email program though, it is a full fledged Personal Information Manager with email, calendar, contacts, address book, memos, and tasks.  It can sync with your PDA, mobile phone, and Microsoft Outlook. It was the easiest email program I have ever set up. Presto, your getting your emails.

Instant Messaging: If your in to chatting with your friends with instant messaging, Ubuntu comes with an instant messaging program, called Empathy that will allow you to integrate Gmail, AIM, Windows LiVe, Jabber, AOL, Yahoo, QQ, etc.

Web Browser: Firefox and if you attach an Ethernet cable to your computer when you initially load Ubuntu, click on the browser, and presto, your on the Internet.  Ubuntu sets every thing up for you.

Office Applications: Let’s cover these all at once.  Open Office.org was developed by Sun, to compete with Microsoft Office, Sun gave the application and source code to the community, and it is now maintained as Open Source software, it’s free, and comes loaded with Ubuntu.  It can read and save documents in Microsoft format, so other’s can read your documents, and you can read the Microsoft documents other’s send you.  Ubuntu has renamed the Open Office.org program names to make things understandable. Let’s go through each program with the Windows equivalent: Word Processor – Microsoft Word, Spreadsheet – Excel, Presentation – Powerpoint, Evolution – Outlook, and Drawing – Paint.  Open Office.org also has a database program, you can install.

Ubuntu One gives you an interface and 2 Gb’s of storage on the Internet for you to use to transfer files from one computer to another over the Internet.

For graphics, we have F-Spot, a photo manager, you can manage all your photos and pictures.  GIMP, a photo editing program that has been around for years and has the functionality of Adobe Photoshop. If you have a scanner, there’s Image Scanning software called XSane.

Ubuntu has a music application, called Rythmbox, that resembles Winamp in functionality with a music player and library, but unfortunately is not quite there in the skins department.  It does have an internet radio library and an icon for Last.fm. You can download music, buy music, download your Ipod and MP3′s, and listen to podcasts. There’s an audio and media player, the Totem Movie Player.  This will handle a multitude of formats and supports full screen video playback to view your favorite movies.

There are games for you to play: Logic, AisleRiot Solitaire, Blackjack, Chess, Gnometris, Lagno, Mahjongg, Nibbles, Robots, and Tali.

And the “piece de resistance” the Ubuntu Software Center.  This is an easy to use catalog laid out in a nice interface that loads other application that run on Ubuntu.  The Software Center loads these programs with a click of the mouse.  It also removes software you’re no longer using. This is all done with a few clicks of the mouse.  You don’t have to search all over the Internet for software, Ubuntu takes care of all of that for you.

Pardon me, Canon, but Ubuntu and Linux are not new operating systems.  They’ve been around almost as long as Windows, and the Apple operating system is based on Linux.

Have no fear, though, this happens occasionally and what you’ll find when you go looking for a solution is other solutions.  Searching further, for Canon printer drivers, there is a free solution, the CUPS-BNJP Printer Driver, which mimics the Canon BNJP printer protocol for the Canon Pixma printers and works over the network. This also works with the XSane scanning software provided with Ubuntu to allow scanning of documents.

CUPS-BNJP is based on CUPS, CUPS works with other printers besides Canon.  It was built for the Fedora distribution of Linux.  Since Ubuntu uses the Debian distribution, there may or may not be an issue in using CUPS with Ubuntu.  We can check that easily.  If you go to Applications->Ubuntu Software Center->Get Free Software->System Tools and scan through the list of available software, you’ll come to two choices: Printing, Printers.   If you click on “Printing,”  a CUPS printer driver is available.  “Printers” on the menu system gives you a GUI interface between CUPS and the printer.

CUPS uses your web browser to view print jobs, manage your printers, and for online help.  However, it makes use of the command line for its configuration.  The printer GUI in the Ubuntu Software Center. according to the software description,  seemed like it depended on some other software for configuring remote printers on a LAN,  if you don’t want to install a series of dependent software, or if you prefer not to use the command line interface, you probably want to check out a commercial solution, TurboPrint 2 for Linux.

TurboPrint 2 supports ink-jet printer’s from: HP, Bother, Epson, and Canon for all Linux distributions.  For the modest cost of $29 you can be ensured that you printer will function, and pick up a nice set of additional features with the software.

TurboPrint2 features include: high print resolutions, color management that matches screen document color to printed color, printer status monitoring to track print progress and errors, like a low ink cartridge, printing on both sides of the paper, print preview of what your about to print, and intelligent ink management to save ink and extend cartridge life. The one remaining question that I had is will it work on a printer attached to your network, and it will.  This intelligent printer utility has Windows and individual manufacturers printer drivers beat hands down.

The company provides a trial version to see if it will work on your system. You can download from the web and hook it up and if everything works, then purchase the software.  What’s not to like!

Given I was not sure about the Cups-BNJP distribution with Ubunutu,  the GUI configuration tool appeared to need additional software to pick up my printer on my LAN,  which meant there may be some additional configuration issues beyond just downloading the software, and  a free trial of TurboPrint was available, I decided to go with the TurboPrint option and give it a try.

TurboPrint Control Center and Printer Monitor

I downloaded the correct distribution for Ubuntu from their website. Clicked on the install button, the install wizard came up and installed the software.  The installation was painless.  The only thing that made me pause was the request to add a printer before other functionality was available.  This is done with the “Add” button in the Print Control Center.  My model Canon was recognized immediately on my LAN and that was it.  I printed a test page, checked the level of my ink cartridges, and was suitably impressed.

Considering I didn’t have to read any documentation, install several pieces of software,  or potentially do a command line configuration of the printer.  I was up and running in 5 minutes,  and had some one to turn to for support if any problems cropped up, it certainly is worth the $29 asking price for Turbo Print to me,  so much for printer drivers.