Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
*After the Ubuntu setup wizard...*
"OK, nice. The test page works. Now where is my calendar creation program mentioned on the box? Hm. Maybe it's on the CD."
*Pops in CD*
*Double-clicks setup.exe*
*** ERROR ***
* Hear a cry of despair and a dying wail as the user flings himself and the computer out of a fifth story apartment window *
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Or the user looks into the Ubuntu repository for a substitute or replacement application. If it's not among the 30,000 or so free programs in the Ubuntu repository he can install with a single click, he can still Google for a substitute program and usually find it within minutes. Usually there is a .deb package for the program and -- voila' -- after downloading and another single click install, he has the program. That sure was hard!
Let's look at my Brother HL-2280DW printer. Nice, inexpensive printer/scanner/copier. It comes with PaperPort OCR for Windows (maybe for the Mac -- I'm not sure). Of course PaperPort doesn't work on my Linux Mint. So, do I "throw my Linux computer out the window?" as described in your obviously FUDish example? No ... I simply look for a substitute for PaperPort and -- voila' -- install it. In my case I chose Tesseract, originally developed by Xerox, put in the public domain, where Google (among others) has continued development. Since Tesseract is a terminal program, I add a graphic front-end for it, yagf. It works like a charm.
That sure was hard.
This is how most Linux users go about their business. First, since I use Linux, I check to see if the printer has good support for Linux. Brother supplies Linux printer and scanner drivers for its printers. Excellent. I buy the Brother printer. I follow the driver installation instructions -- everything works with the built-in programs in Linux and I find the open source OCR replacement for PaperPort. Minor problem solved.
And absolutely no hysterics or hyperventilating necessary. I guess I could sit and whine about not having a Linux version of PaperPort, but I would just as soon use my computer, thank you.