Suggested printers for Linux (and Ubuntu)

Another quick post re Ubuntu. My love/hate relationship continues with Ubuntu! Even though I've continued to use my Canon MP620 printer (because the printer itself seems really solid) I also continue to be dissatisfied with Canon's linux drivers, or lack thereof.

So what's an Ubuntu-phile supposed to do? HP is clearly the best supported as HP has excellent drivers available, but I've really turned against HP after just ONE TOO MANY poorly designed units. (I think the last straw was a mid-level inkjet printer which started to refuse to print because it's 'user convenience' paper-upside-down detector failed and the failure-mode was to deny any further printing!)

There is an online database of printers with Linux support but it's maintained by user contributions so it's less than authoritative,
www.linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi

But I eventually learned (and from a single offhand comment in a single post in a long discussion of printers on the Ubuntu forums, whew!) that Brother has Linux drivers available! And, in fact, the 3rd-party Linux Printing database confirms that there is a huge list of Brother printers that have been reported to work perfectly out-of-the-box.

So, my next printer will probably be a Brother.
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Further info on playing AVCHD

I've had a chance to test this on several computers now and can make the following clarifications and improvements to the suggested procedure.

NOTES

• You need at least a ~2.4 GHz processor. It doesn't playback correctly on my 1.9 GHz whereas it plays-back with spare cpu cycles on my 2.7 GHz AMD X2, as well as on a 2.7 GHz Intel Core2.
• The existing 0.9.4 version (in the standard repository) plays AVCHD just as good as the newer "1.0~git" nightly. So there's no need to go through uninstalling, adding the 'nightly' repository etc. But you may still need to reset the configuration files.
• The UI on the 1.0 version has a lot of bugs, so it's preferable to use 0.9.4 in that regard.
  

TWEAKS
There are 3 changes you should make in the configuration:

1. in Tools > Preferences, under Instances, enable "Allow only one instance".
2. Click on Show Settings:All (radio button in bottom-left). Under Input/Codecs > Other > FFmpeg,
   set "Skip loop filter for h.264" = ALL
3. under Video > Filters, on the right-side screen, scroll down the page to the second listing (for Video Output Filter Modules) and enable "Deinterlacing video filter"

That last change re deinterlacing will cause VLC to default to "Discard" mode which uses the least CPU. If you have CPU cycles to spare, of course, you could then go down into the Filters > Deinterlace settings and select a better mode.
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Playing AVCHD on Ubuntu Linux

Have I finally managed it? Can I finally watch my Sony HD camcorder recordings on my Ubuntu home computer?? Still need to try this on my main system (which is faster) but I can finally play them without crashing! Here's how I did it:

PROCEDURE

1. Tested on an Athlon X2 dual-1.9Ghz machine running Ubuntu 8.10
2. I uninstalled all existing 'vlc' components (which were v0.9.4) through Synaptic
3. I also had to delete the ~/.config/VLC configuration files
4. Per the instructions on the Videolan.org site I added their "Intrepid/Nightly" repository to Synaptic,
   http://nightlies.videolan.org/#debian
5. I installed the latest version, v1.0.0~git20081127-4 (according to Synaptic)
6. I then disabled the Videolan repository since this copy seems to be working!
7. Finally, I disabled the FFmpeg "h.264 Loop Filter" in VLC
   (which improves playback speed but at the cost of some picture quality)
   http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=42328

My Sony's AVCHD clips are 1440x1080i and this computer (using one 1.9 GHz cpu-core at 100%) can't quite play it back without dropping frames. BUT it doesn't crash anymore, which every other video player (including previous versions of VLC) would do! So now I'm hopeful that my other system will be fast enough...

P.S. I'm being very specific about uninstalling all the original 0.9.4 modules, as well as deleting the hidden config folder, because both of those elements caused errors otherwise!
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Software RAID really is faster

I have run my personal computer on a RAID mirror for years now. I learned the primary reason for RAID on the day, more than 10 years ago, when I started my current job and discovered that my new employer's file server had been running in recovery mode -- for months -- on their RAID-5 array. I had never actually seen a RAID array much less had to recover one. Ah, yes, those were exciting days: "Must.. Fix.. Server, or.. Lose.. New.. Job!"

I've also gone through dozens of hard drives, most of which were malfunctioning by the time I trashed them (and yes, I now securely wipe them beforehand). So it makes great sense to use duplicate drives to avoid a catastrophic failure of one.

One of the other reasons is supposed to be that it's faster. More drives should equal more potential throughput. But in practice it's rarely the case. Most tests I've seen of RAID-5, for instance, show it to be much slower than the simpler forms of RAID, e.g. RAID-4 which uses more drives but avoids the need for any CRC calculations (or whatever RAID-5 is spending so much time doing).

Now, finally, I feel confident that my RAID really is faster. I did a very simple test on my test machine which is setup almost identically to my 'production' machine. The computer is a P4 with 1GB running Ubuntu 7.04 on a pair of identical IDE drives configured as a software mirror. I disabled the login prompt (in System > Administration > Login Window > Security, Enable Automatic Login) and then also set the 'Startup' to immediately load about a dozen apps (in System > Preferences > Sessions, New).

Running normally (with both drives) the test config took about 1:30 to boot and finish loading everything.

I then unplugged one of the drives, let the system figure-out that the array needed to run 'degraded', and retested. It now took over 2:00 to do the same process.

So the mirrored drives appeared to be 25% faster! Of course, a better test would be to reinstall without any RAID partitions, i.e., to eliminate the possibility that the degraded array was the culprit. But then I'd also have to try and recreate the exact same set of installed apps etc, and I'm not that interested in disproving my newfound satisfaction!

Is Ubuntu/Linux really this good?

The thought that occurred to me today -- and inspired setting-up this blog -- was the realization that my current Ubuntu workstation is working so well now that it's become boring. I'm not used to this! The overwhelming majority of the time I've got a long list of tweaks I'm trying to accomplish on my home computers. Maybe I've simply forgotten the things I've given-up upon?

Currently I'm running Ubuntu 7.04 with two mirrored SATA drives. I've updated the drive configs so that I can still boot even if one fails (by default this is not the case?!). I've switched most of my daily applications to Linux equivalents, and the handful of Windows holdovers all work either 'directly' in WINE or in a Virtualbox virtual machine running Windows 2000.

So, is it really time for me to stop obsessively checking for updates and just take my computer for granted??