amunix

I like Debian for the rock solid stability of the applications. I am yet to hit a segfault and a resultant core dump on any of its apps. It helps especially when I am doing monetary transactions over the net - never ever has Opera blown on my face.

The Debian release cycles are long (Debian releases when it is time), so if you run the "stable" release, you might have very old apps. Other Linux distros', make a release every now and then - without much thinking about the app stability. IMHO, the latest-and-greatest app, and all its eye candy is futile, if it is not stable. In the open source world, you can't guarantee stability of any app on Linux, simply because you don't make them - you merely integrate them. So Debian does a thorough testing of the apps too, and hence the longer release cycles.

If you come from the Red Hat world, Debian is a bit difficult to install though - you need to have lot of details about the hardware. But once you are up and running on Debian, there is no looking back. Oh, and its package management system apt, beats the sh** of other package management systems.

If you wish to have rock solid stability, but are okay with a bit out-of-date (depends on how you look at it, really) apps., then Debian is for you. I run Debian on my Dell Latitude D400, and am pretty happy with it. I am now eagerly waiting for the next "stable" release - Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 - which is just round the corner! :-)

For the last month or so, I have been trying to print from my Debian sarge installation - but with no results. I was on the verge of giving up, when I decided to dig more into the details of the CUPS printing system. Finally, I got the printing working - I was missing the `gs-esp' package (Ghostscript PostScript interpreter - ESP version), which was the root cause. I am summarizing below the agony that I went through while I got this thing working. Hope it helps you... :-)

1. Configured CUPS: http://localhost:631/ now shows the web-UI of CUPS. Configured a printer (HP LaserJet 4050 series, with jetdirect (socket://printername:9100/)
2. Tried printing through it, but failed. A simple text document failed. CUPS showed me the error `client-error-not-possible'. Bah!
3. CUPS configuration files generally sit under /etc/cups. Edited cupsd.conf, and changed the logging level to warn. The modified line looked like this
LogLevel warn
4. Tried printing the page again, while tailing /var/log/cups/error_log. The error logged there was
E [10/Mar/2006:12:06:19 +530] Unable to convert file 0 to printable format for job 13!
Aha! There, there. Seems like we are not able to convert the file to a proper printing format.
5. Okay, go and install the `gs-esp' package for Debian using `apt-get install gs-esp'
6. Reload the CUPS printing system using /etc/init.d/cupsys reload.

Try printing NOW! :-)

Though this thing seemed pretty simple, it took me a long time to debug and fix - as I was unaware of CUPS, and the overall printing mechanism. Oh, and to add insult to injury, I noticed that RHEL went away printing happily - guess they load this package by default! :-|

Oh, and as a sidenote, I am facing the same problem with my FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE box too. I guess this is the same problem there to, so should not be much difficult to fix! :-)

Anyways, now I am happy.

Tags: cups, debian, freebsd, printing