Meanwhile back at the ranch.

Here in the Linuxville guide office things are busy. I am upgrading the old laptop from Xubuntu 11.04 to 11.10. It had died and was revived. It is officially at home on my work desk as a media player and web browser. The newer laptop is wonderful, except for the browser glitches. It handles my graphics apps well but the browser stuff........enough for the rehash.

At the gallery we are looking at several old PCs. They don't have to run the latest stuff, though that would be nice. We can use them to run slide show displays and play media files. I am getting some refresh in the MS XP world, but after all is said and done my Linux and open source disks are handy. There is a Mac, a G3 or something, never used one for any length of time. You see everybody has used and trusts Microsoft and Mac, even all the quirks. I have been a Linux user 10 years. Mind ya now, though I am a technician I don't go too deep, else there won't be time to do things like art. Fixing computers for others is endless.

What's next on the scope, networking. Here's the game. I have my big printer attached to the XP box so that the printer drivers and color management software are no problem. Also on my net are the Linux laptops. If the XP box is a print server then it will use the printer drivers on each Linux box instead of the XP ones. Linux printer drivers are OK for some printers but awkward for others. Ink level monitoring sucks for my printers in Linux. It might be better to just transfer files through a shared folder and print from XP. You got to keep it simple even if it takes a few more steps. OR hire Poindexter the neighborhood techno wizard to configure Samba and show you the big button to push.

Here's the problem, an all Linux network is not explained to well enough for the less informed to just do it. Then the Microsoft net requires domains, workgroups and other net hanky-panky. A mixed network requires dance lessons (Samba), carnal knowledge, ip addresses, port permissions or an application that makes it all easy. Gee Arnold, do you really do art on your computer? You spend so much time messing with the hardware. Yeah I do, but also I'm prone to show-n-tell. I think we should talk about displaying stuff on the net so that ones can't steal yo stuff so readily. Man, there is so much to learn.