Things they don't teach you in school
Just writing this so I can remember it later. Had a horrible time trying to figure out how to get my Canon Pixma IP1500 printer working in OpenSUSE 11. The trick was to find the right compat rpm which has the libpng.so.2 stuff.
The article is here
http://forums.opensuse.org/archives/sf-archives/archives-tips-tricks-tweaks/322220-canon-drivers-where-they-2.html
Hard to find the rpm file, so its here:
And you need this file also (Canon printer driver)
About a year or so ago, I got introduced to MythTV which is a fantastic linux based application that turns your computer into a full fledged home theatre PC. Among its many options, you get:
At the time, I didn’t have a PC to put into my audio rack, so I used an old black Xbox. Hacking the xbox was fun, and getting Myth setup on it was easy but the Xbox is too slow. The original XBOX has a PIII 700mhz processor. The menus in MythTV were very slow and I’m not a patient person.
So I scrapped the MythBox for a native app called Xbox Media Center. It is mostly just a player, no add-ons like Myth has. So, my quest for a good, budget sized, PC for my home theatre continued. Fast forward to 2008. I bought some computers at an auction, Pentium 4, with 2.2ghz and 512 ram. Picked up some 80 gig hard drives cheap, and setup one of them as a MythTV box. This time I used KnoppMyth which is a customized Knoppix install. Worked perfectly! But the problem is this Gateway computer (comparable to a Dell E series business computer) doesn’t have SPDIF audio or Video out, so I will have to add on a low profile NVidia card and am looking at a USB Audio solution for the Dolby out. The USB Audio isn’t really necessary, as I could just use the stereo out plugs, this is “low end” after all. I don’t watch much 5.1 movies because my living room isn’t setup for the surround anyway. So the extra expense and hassle wouldn’t pay off for me.
I’ll have to add a few things to this box to make it complete. Namely, I need a low profile Nvidia card with video out.
And if I want better audio, probably the Terratec USB 5.1 audio box would be good. Word on the street is that it works great with Linux USB Audio.
Some people will spend upwards of $500 to $1k for a home theatre PC. I’m spending less than $100 for mine.
I have a few of these computers and could set one up for you if you’re interested. Contact me.
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