if you had asked me a half-dozen years ago what i thought about setting up printers and media playing on linux i would've said that it was in a miserable state and the future looked rather bleak.
well, yesterday i had the opportunity to use a closed source operating system for a bit and discovered that kde and linux have progressed to the point where we are kicking some ass when it comes to these two tasks.
sure, we need to install binary codecs post-install to get media playing working, but once that happens ... holy crap!
apparently windows media player isn't on its own able to shift the audio or video streams in case of a clip where the two streams are out of sync. while it seems you can get 3rd party tools to help with this, i like how the media players i have installed for kde support this out of the box thanks to xine and mplayer. huzzah. windows media player also does a craptastic job of scaling video from a usability perspective; it's far more intuitive with the kde players: just resize the window.
it also reminded me of a situation at a lecture i attended last year where the presenter wanted to show a video clip on the overhead from their laptop and ended up struggling with windows media player for a good 15 minutes to get it working properly. would've been quicker for me to have driven home, grabbed my laptop running linux, drove back and hooked it up ...
as for setting up printing, it's no contest. setting up a network printer under microsoft windows is the most unintuitive thing i've seen in a while. our printing system in kde, thanks to the kde-print hackers (hey michael!), are simple and easy to use. the scanning feature in particular is a winner. a recent kde convert remarked how straight forward it was to set up printing compared to windows, and i have to agree. printing to pdf is also pretty sweet. all that's really needed at this point is some polish to some of the dialogs (e.g. the setup dialog for scanning starts out too small by default, resulting in a line edit that's too short to hold a network address) and more hardware vendor (IHV) support in the form of quality drivers and q/a testing.
side note to jim gettys: next time you decide to comment on printing support (or any other desktop sub-system) in public as you did in december, try catching up with the state of the art. printing guis on linux are pretty damn good at this point.
of course, this begs the question why people seem to have so many problems with these things still. the answer, i think, is pretty obvious: right now everyone plays the part of their own systems integrator. given a properly installed kde on linux or bsd system there just aren't that many problems left that aren't IHV related.
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The problem with printing is not on GUI level but on driver level. Try for example finding drivers for any new Canon printer, or any multifunction device. CUPS habit of stopping printer after any perceived error (like hitting 'print' before turning printer on) and requiring root password to start it again is driving me nuts too.
and where is the problem? maybe its hmm canon! My brother multifunction device works perfect because brother writes driver for it.
yes, the problems now exist largely on the driver level. and that's really the exciting news (if you can imagine that! ;). why?
because if you go back in your memory to the late 90s, printing on unix sucked ass big time. we're talking sucking not just donkey nuts, but entire herds of elephant balls.
printcap, anyone? ugh! config GUI's? non-existent!
it's a bright new world where we are left complaining about drivers because that means we've done our job. i'm confident we'll get IHV's onside over the coming years too.
When are you going to improve the print dialog? In its current state, KDE3.5.x it's very complicated. You have these items: Add, Printer, Print Server, Print Manager, View...all displayed there! They should not all be there though I know they are of some use. To Joe User, confusion reigns in this situation. I have to disagree with you on Windows Media Player. Scaling is not as bad as you mention.
When it comes to MPlayer, I just wish we had a decent front end. Or even better, an application with the front end and engine "glued" together. This way, one installs just one application to be in business.
> When are you going to improve the
> print dialog?
the moment some provides a patch? ;) i personally don't have the time at the moment to work on this dialog.
> In its current state, KDE3.5.x
> it's very complicated. You have
> these items: Add, Printer, Print
> Server, Print Manager, View...all
> displayed there!
to be fair, a number of these are only visible in the area that's hidden until you click "Options >>"
the biggest problem with the print dialog is that there are too many items scattered across multiple places in the dialog that should probably all be contained in the Options area and re-sorted so that like items appear together.
that said, in real world usage the dialog serves pretty well. it could be better, but it's above "not serviceable" which is something of an achievement =)
I personally find the SUSE printer installer (part of YAST http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=565&slide=19 ) to work better and be more polished than the KDE printer installer.
Why haven't the improvements in YAST been ported to KDE? Especially since YAST is based on Qt and is even integrated in the KDE Control Center? "Swiping" the good stuff from YAST should therefore not be too hard ;-)
I'm not saying KDE devs should drop KDE's "Add Printer" wizard, but they should try to incorporate pertinent improvements from distro-supported solutions (such as SUSE's, Mandrake's, Linspire's or Xandros'), since these solutions are more closely maintained and driver issues are fixed earlier.
In other words, why reinvent the wheel when KDE-friendly distros already did the hard work, which is available as open source?
> "Swiping" the good stuff from
> YAST should therefore not be too
> hard ;-)
unfortunately this is incorrect.
using YAST in SUSE 10, i have to say that the printer adding stuff in it blows compared to what's in KDE. it's a jumbled maze of pathways, unclear in purpose at several points, not nearly as flexible (try scanning a network that isn't the same subnet as the one your computer is on), etc, etc... not to mention it's fugly.
> they should try to incorporate
> pertinent improvements from
> distro-supported solutions (such
> as SUSE's, Mandrake's, Linspire's
> or Xandros'), since these
> solutions are more closely
> maintained
you have this exactly backwards. the distros need to work with kde before kde can work with the distros. the shoe is on their foot: they need to stop trying to pointlessly differentiate themselves by creating their own messed up system config tools and collaborate with upstream projects to do it right.
> and driver issues are
> fixed earlier.
we use the same driver database.
the distros need to work with kde before kde can work with the distros.
I totally agree. There was some cooperation between Linspire and Cristian Tibirna back in August 2005, but it didn't get very far.
The pessimist in me says distros want to make improvements without anyone knowing so that they can claim a feature months before their competitors have a chance to port it. Why should they provide patches when they can force other distros to dig through their code bomb?
Wouldn't it be a good idea to put a big fat logo on the for each distro that provides patches? Do it on a monthly basis: if distroX provides a patch this month, they get a logo. If they don't, it gets taken off. Call it "Supporter of the Month"...
"struggling with windows media player for a good 15 minutes to get it working properly. "
Funny you mention that. I've had my own red-faced moments when i've demo-ed the multi-media capabilities of KDE to my windows counter parts. In fact, on my own box audio works fine, but video works only when launched from the command line. Any time i try from windows, no problems.
Bottom line, i'm becoming increasingly frustrated with the multi media situation on linux. Your anecdote was either an extreme exaggeration, or the guy was a complete dolt.
> but video works only when
> launched from the command line
"right now everyone plays the part of their own systems integrator."
did you install and configure linux on your own, or did it come pre-installed and set up by the hardware vendor?
> Your anecdote was either an
> extreme exaggeration, or the guy
> was a complete dolt.
or perhaps media playing on windows isn't so perfect. the problem he had was in getting audio to work properly which eventually he did but it was far from a "works out of the box" affair, and this was on a system that had the OS installed and configured when he bought it, which just shouldn't happen.
Pity you seem so dead set on turning a blind eye to the problems of KDE printing, yes printing on Linux has come a long way with CUPS, but then again CUPS has already existed for quite a number of years and is can still be mind-numbingly difficult that it can drive a whole IT-department crazy.
Often just restarting the print manager or just fiddling around with settings will suddenly make everything work only to have everything grind to a halt again after a reboot.
The scan button? Sorry but I still have to see that one return a usable result in all the years of using KDE (and in fact in the first years I didn't even know it was there, how's that for user friendliness!)
Truth be told I've never had much problems getting local printers to work, but getting the printer to work on other systems, especially when those systems are Windows (you want drivers to be downloaded automatically to the target system of course): a complete nightmare.
What? Driver downloading is Samba's job? I say, why do I even need to care?
So you either REALLY make it better/easier than Windows or you accept that most Linux users need to be part-time Sys/Network Admins and you make it easier for them.
But for both groups KDE printing just isn't there yet.
> and is can still be
> mind-numbingly difficult that it
> can drive a whole IT-department
> crazy
tips:
- purchase printers with decent support. driver issues are the #1 problem i've seen here. with decent printers, it's a dream.
- get decent people working in your IT department. i have seen people do truly stupendous things with CUPS (and, for that matter, samba) when really all that's needed is to just use the supplied GUIs and stop messing with things "because i like editing text files" or "i know how to do it"
that said, KDE's printing UI systems work as well as the underlying systems (e.g. CUPS) are capable. and given a half-decent set up, they work well and KDE's UI has proven very reliable in office situations for me over the years.
> Sorry but I still have to see
> that one return a usable result
> in all the years of using KDE
i've used it once this week and watched someone else use it this past week as well (i observe usage a fair amount for see how things do or don't work for people), both in real-world scenarios (not "fake" usability testing set ups) and it worked both times.
in fact, i've seen it work reliable for years.
then again, i build my own KDE from sources and don't rely on distro-supplied stuff which, i've found, is far more brittle than what we have. i really hope you aren't confusing, for instance, YAST with KDE's print system.
sounds like you've had some bad luck (or just bad configuration experience?) but given how it works for most people, most of the time versus the mess that is windows, i'd say we're doing well.
> especially when those systems are
> Windows
i'm talking about printing on KDE, not windows. you may have noticed that providing print services for windows via samba via cups is a cups and samba and windows thing, not a kde thing.
Aaron,
I am long-time KDE user and advocate and
I agree mostly with what you claim about printing support, but there are still some gotchas which shouldn't be there at this stage.
For example, if you try to print a pdf that has been formatted for letter-size printing to a laser printer that only has A4 paper, printing will fail.
What does windows do in these cases? It scales the output to the new paper size and prints the document, which is what most users would expect.
In fact, windows allows you to choose whether this is something you want to do.
I'd say this is one of the key things missing from kprinter. I work with people from all over the world and I need to be able to print their documents even if they have been formatted with different page-size expectations. Of course, this only works well for page sizes that are reasonably close such as A4 and US letter.
In summary, the scale printed output to fit your choice of paper size should be a standard option in kprinter, particularly when it detects that you are trying to print to a printer whose paper size doesn't match that of the document you are trying to print.
If you need some screenshots of how Windows implements this feature, I'd be happy to provide them. I'd also be happy to follow up with anyone who you think might be able to get the ball rolling to fix this issue.
Thanks for all your hard and wonderful work,
Gonzalo
I still have problems with media-playback in Linux. last time when I had problems with it was last saturday. Yes, the video was Quicktime embedded in a website (a video in Apple.com), but still. I KNOW it can be made to work.
First I tried it with Konqueror. No-go. It just displayed a black screen with no video or sound. It tried using Codeine to play it back, but I tried other medial-players as well (related to this: Konqueror always crashed if I changed the mediaplayer while Konqueror was running), but no-go. I then tried it with Firefox. I actually got it to play back, but it always crashed midway through the video. Most frustrating.
The distro I used was Kubuntu, a supposedly easy to use distro.
It seems to me that things like this sometimes work, and sometimes they do not. Which is pretty annoying. I would accept it if it didn't work at all. Or if it worked all the time. But as it is today, sometimes it seems to work perfectly, whereas some other time it refuses to work at all. Is it the alignment of the moon that is to be blamed here?
Yes, I know that binary codecs are to blame. But even after I have installed those codecs correctly, there are still problems.
"because if you go back in your memory to the late 90s, printing on unix sucked ass big time. we're talking sucking not just donkey nuts, but entire herds of elephant balls."
Thanks for the mental image dude!
@Janne: yes, embedded media in web pages is still a problem we contend with. it's made difficult because not only does it mean loading external plugins on demand to play media usually encoded in proprietary formats, but there are usually odd streaming URLs, redirections and what not to get around. we still have work to do on this front.
Printer configuration easy in KDE? I don't think so. An example:
- I open kdeprint dialog and "Add new printer".
- Select "local printer".
- Ohhhh, I can see the name of my "HP Deskjet 815" hanging from the USB or Paralell Port (KDE has recognized my printer, KDE is great!!!).
- Now I must look for my printer manufacturer and model in a very big list of printers, why??? but, didn't KDE recognize my printer in the previous step???
- After selecting my model of printer I must choose between for drivers that I have never listened about them, which the fuck should I choose???
Of course, this is just an example, I know the explanation of all these issues, but know too that in any Windows installing a local printer is much easier than in KDE, because after the system has recognized the printer you don't need to choose the model again or select between many drivers (please, select automatically the best one, I don't know what is the best and I don't need to know that just for using my home printer).
One more thing: using CUPS has an issue, it doesn't allow "print preview" in the kde print dialog, so if you select "2 sides per sheet", activate "Preview" checkbox and press "Print" you'll see 1 side per sheet, that is very very confusing.
KDE is far still from Windows printing easiness.
@ibc: yes, these are good points about awkwardnesses in current printing backends.
what's interesting here is that while the user has to think a bit it's all fairly logical: a person -can- (and they do) figure it out: "oh, i saw the model just now on screen and it's also on the actual printer. let me pick that one from the list in front of me that i'm being directed to pick from!"
on windows, setting up a network printer (haven't set up a local printer as i didn't have need to ;) is completely arcane and there is, IMO, no real way for anyone to figure it out.
that's the difference between "not perfect, but usable" and "completely fucking frustrating! why do i even use a computer?!"
btw, there's a printing summit coming up that's being put on by OSDL in a couple of months that will hopefully address some of the remaining issues we have...
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