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Re: [LUG] OSs

 

Dear All,
Message from a non-nerd!
As I type this 'thank you' Debian - suggested by several of you - is happily looking after my ancient PG EasyNote laptop of the early C21st - the dear old thing has quite a bit of whizz about it!
Thanks for all the advice.
I have a Brother HL-3040CN colour laser which at the moment I can't get printing - it will a
happily whizz (that word again) out blank paper but no print. It is NOT listed in the Debian set-up list and I've tried using the Linux driver off the firmware CD BUT no luck!
Any advice out there? Change your printer is NOT a good answer!
Have a good day,
Grandad Bee.



--- On Sun, 14/8/11, George Parker <georgeparker20@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: George Parker <georgeparker20@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [LUG] OSs
To: list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sunday, 14 August, 2011, 8:59

On 12/08/11 10:49, Grant Sewell wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Aug 2011 10:41:07 +0100
> Philip Hudson wrote:
>
>> On 12 Aug, 2011, at 10:25 am, Gordon Henderson wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 11 Aug 2011, Neil Stone wrote:
>>>
>>>> Sometimes bleeding edge == bleeding frustrating
>>> Well - indeed...
>>>
>>> And I've just had a look at Linux Mint - noticed it's got a Debian
>>> base as well as an Ubuntu base - and the Debian is based on Debian
>>> Testing... I'm somewhat surprised that they are doing this, and
>>> expecting people to actually use it (and surprised that people are
>>> using it for day to day businessy critical things - like running
>>> an accountancy package!)
>>>
>>> If you want stability and support for day to day (and business)
>>> stuff, then get Debian stable! And you can get a minimal CD
>>> (180MB) which installs the rest off the net.
>>>
>>> http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst
>>>
>>> Really - what are you going to gain by going to some of the more
>>> bleeding edge distributions? (unless you're a total control geek
>>> like me and want a different kernel, but even I stuck to Debian
>>> stable for everything else!)
>>>
>>> Stable is stable, and sometimes it's good enough for a long, long
>>> time..
>> Well, yes, except that debian testing is almost as stable as some
>> other "stable" releases. "Testing" here means integration testing, I
>> think; in other words, each package has already gone through fairly
>> rigorous testing before being allowed into "testing", and the only
>> bugs expected are integration/interdependency-type things.
>> Crucially, packages in "testing" are "known good" and 90%+ expected
>> to be in the next stable release in the same form (unless they're
>> updated again in the interim -- debian releases are infrequent).
>> Packages in debian testing are fairly current -- much more so than
>> the generally intolerably out-of-date stuff in debian stable, at
>> least for my uses -- but the true bleeding-edge stuff is in debian
>> unstable, which only guarantees that a package will compile, more or
>> less.
>>
>> I always use "testing" and I've *never* been bitten. YMMV
> I've been bitten by the "things not updating properly because of
> dependency problems" bug with Testing, but it generally gets resolved
> within a few days.  I've never been bitten by any substantial problems
> with it.
>
> Grant.
>
I've been using Mint Debian Testing for about 9 months now on 2
computers with no problems other than a corrupted Grub on one machine
which was easily solved.  Probably down the machines chequered history
rather than Debian testing.

George

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