Out with Windows 2000, in with Fedora 14, part 2

By apexwm, 15 March, 2011 16:40

Recently I wrote about another Windows to Linux migration that I recently tackled. This is the followup after the migration. There were a couple of hiccups, but those have been ironed out and things are going very smooth now.

First, the easy one. Upgrading from Fedora 12 to 14 was just about flawless. As with most Linux upgrades, most settings and files are preserved. The only issue I had was that a couple of Firefox and Thunderbird settings had to be set (i.e. font size and font selection). But, all Gnome settings and all data files remained completely in tact.

With the other system that was upgraded from Windows 2000, things went relatively smooth as far as migrating data and files. They used to run Firefox and Thunderbird in Windows, so placing the profile folders in the .mozilla/firefox and .thunderbird folders in their home folder worked great. Change the profile.ini file to point to the old folder name, and opening each application brought in all of the data. As I mentioned above, I had to set the font size and default font selections for some reason in Firefox and Thunderbird. I did receive a question of what all the "extra" temp files are that Windows left laying around, which I tried to clean out as much as possible. Thankfully, in Linux most temp files are placed in /tmp which doesn't reside in the user's home folder and cleans itself automatically.

The issues:

I discovered an issue with GStreamer where Totem and Rhythmbox pop up with a "missing plugins" error when they are opened. There appears to be a problem with GStreamer 0.10 blacklisting plugins, and currently there is no fix. In Totem, the popup error is closed out and it continues to work. But, Rhythmbox doesn't appear to play any audio files. In the interim, I installed XMMS and they are using that temporarily for their audio files. The interface and features of Rhythmbox are very nice, like the ability to sort media, create playlists, and interface with a lot of MP3 players, etc. so I am hoping to have the solution for that soon.

Installation of the Laserjet 1000 printer only half worked. The printer was instantly detected and installed, but when printing an error came up saying it needed a proprietary plugin to be installed. Why? Because by default, Fedora tries to only include free software, no proprietary software. The fix is to download the plugin installer, hplip-*.**.*-plugin.run (at: http://www.openprinting.org/download/printdriver/auxfiles/HP/plugins/) and run it (don't forget to chmod 775 to it first!). Then, remove the printer in the System / Administration / Printing panel, unplug and replug it in, and let Fedora do the magic of automatically installing it without any more intervention needed. If you are installing a printer that doesn't require any proprietary software, it should install automatically.

And finally the SCSI scanner that needed to be installed. I was a little worried about this one, as the scanner is about 15 years old. It's a Cacham Spendeur VM3552, that originally came with drivers for Windows 98 only. We had to purchase an expensive 3rd party driver suite and application called "Art Scan Pro" in the past, in order to use the scanner with Windows 2000, because no drivers were written by the manufacturer past Windows 98. But, with Linux being open source, my hopes were that we would not have to worry about it any longer. When opening XSane or the Simple Scan tool under Applications, it complained that no scanner could be found. SCSI is not always great at detecting new hardware on the fly (even though the Linux kernel is great at this), which I'm so used to that it didn't occur to me that the SCSI bus needs to be forced to rescan. Luckily, the solution is to install the package "sg3_utils" (I always use yum for this -- "yum install sg3_utils"), which adds a script called /usr/bin/rescan-scsi-bus.sh. I gave the user permissions to run this by adding a line to /etc/sudoers as : "username ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/rescan-scsi-bus.sh", then as the user, ran the script with "sudo /usr/bin/rescan-scsi-bus.sh" as the user and voila!, the kernel saw the scanner and it was working like magic. I ended up creating a script and pointed the Main Menu items for XSane and Simple Scan to it, so that /usr/bin/rescan-scsi-bus.sh would run every time they open XSane or Simple Scan from the menu. The script has these lines:

#!/bin/sh
gnome-terminal --command="/usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/rescan-scsi-bus.sh"
simple-scan

Their Canon digital camera worked like magic, Gnome came up with a box and by default it opens Shotwell Photo Manager. I have not used Shotwell too much but it appears to have the basic features. They had used the proprietary Canon software in the past and Shotwell is easy enough that they didn't need any help using it.

Other than these issues, the PC is running great and in fact they immediately noticed a significant speed increase in running their applications. I was surprised that still some tweaks were needed, but when dealing with proprietary hardware/software, we will continue to see these types of problems. My best advice is to direct new users to the Fedora Forums which are very understanding for new users.

Talkback

Very interesting results, and good reading. Contrast this experience with mine, I had an HP ScanJet (can't remember the model number offhand), which I purchased less than six months before Windows Vista was released. When I tried Vista, I was shocked to find that my shiny new ScanJet wasn't supported. I was even more shocked when I was told by both Microsoft and HP that the "solution" to the problem was to buy a new scanner. Period. There were no plans to provide Vista drivers for it. When Windows 7 came along, with all the hullaballoo about improved device support and such, my hopes were raised again... until I learned that the "solution" now was to run a Windows XP virtual system under Windows 7, just so that it could continue using the XP drivers. Great solution. Not.

jw
J.A. Watson 16 March, 2011 12:22
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Which model ScanJet is this? Because I bought a HP ScanJet 2400 Series in 2005 which is a year before Windows Vista RTMed, was running Windows XP and dual booting with the Windows Vista beta at the time. The Vista beta detected the scanner without me even needing to install drivers from the CD. In fact, the scanner continues to work up to this day even with Windows 7, it even works under the 64 bit architecture. I am really curious to know which ScanJet model you are using and if you had try browsing HP's website for an updated driver or let Windows Update check for an updated driver since the Windows Update database has a vast library of drivers.. Its very possible both Microsoft and HP Support gave you misinformation.
Andre Da Costa 18 March, 2011 03:19
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It was a ScanJet 4600c, the "See-Through Flatbed Scanner". I definitely did try it, and Vista did not recognize it at all. I checked with both HP and Microsoft, and both told me very explicitly "tough beans, buy a new scanner". Interestingly, I just checked and it appears that one or the other of those two finally gave up and made some drivers for it, because now it is apparently supported on both Vista and Win7. I also found this link:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15179&prodSeriesId=303776&prodNameId=303778&swEnvOID=2100&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=sj-47456-1

Which comes a bit closer to the answers I was given at the time.

jw
J.A. Watson 18 March, 2011 06:33
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Well, its good to know there is a driver available for it now (since March 2007 actually). Sometimes you just have to give these things a little time especially for what was considered a brand new OS at the time. When Vista RTMed in January of 2007, a lot of Independent Hardware Vendors didn't start writing drivers for the OS until the RTM code was available considering that the OS was frozen and feature complete from build 5112 (August 2005). Of course, there was a lot reluctance built up because the OS was such a moving target during its development. Around summer 2007, there was a vast library of drivers available for many devices, but the early damage had already been done giving it a bad reputation. Notice your initial experiences finding a driver left an impression on you although there has been a driver available for Vista 32 and 64 bit since March of 2007. This is 2 months after Windows Vista's General Availability. I am sure new versions of Linux will break some things too. I hope this is a lesson in not being quick to judge. BTW, Windows 7 uses the Vista driver model, so it would work just the same using the Vista driver. :)
Andre Da Costa 20 March, 2011 01:57
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Thanks for the feedback and interesting information regarding the scanner and compatibility in Windows. Yes it is true that software does sometimes need time to catch up to hardware. But, sometimes, in the case with Windows, software tends to forget about old hardware and the only fix (with Windows) is to buy new hardware, when the old hardware works perfectly fine. 64-bit in Windows adds yet another level of complexity because not all drivers are compiled for 64-bit and are only offered for 32-bit. Linux is much more open because distributions compile both 32-bit and 64-bit kernels (and binaries), so that you get complete support with either one. When I buy hardware I do a little research to make sure there is Linux support, which there usually is. You can do the same for Windows, but there's no guarantee that it will be supported by Windows in 2,3,5,10 years, etc. down the road.
apexwm 21 March, 2011 16:28
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My experience with 64 bit Windows has been pretty smooth. I first started out with Windows XP Professional x64 back in early 2005 and I was greatly surprised by how seamless the experience was. All of my existing devices my HP 840c Deskjet printer I bought back in 2000 worked out of the box, so did my Motorola C350 World GPRS modem. You need to take into account that in the world of Windows we are still transitioning from 32 to 64 bit. It took at least 10 years to move from 16 to 32 bit the results for 64 bit have been exceptional. Another thing we should take into account is the need for every driver to be 64 bit compatible. Its not gonna be the case, considering that Windows 7 32 and 64 bit already supports 700,000 devices, of course you will have a few along the way that do not support the 64 bit architecture.

Sometimes you need to inform the developer, sometimes the developer doesn't see the demand to justify writing a 64 bit native driver. Supporting a device for 10 years is a bit too much to expect from some developers too, considering that the average lifecycle in a business or most consumers is 5 years, 7 the most, this includes additional hardware such as scanners and printers. You will find the rare pockets of users who feel they should still be running that printer they bought in 1995 today. If lightening had not hit my 840c I wouldn't have a reason to invest in a sleeker AIO Wireless printer from HP which was a sinch to setup and makes printing projects so much easier.
Andre Da Costa 21 March, 2011 20:45
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