Examination of a Linux Gui, w/color commentary

[Mark Komarinski]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2004 at 09:47:23AM -0500, Jeff Kinz wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 27, 2004 at 07:58:45AM -0500, Mark Komarinski wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 09:34:58PM -0500, Jeff Kinz wrote:
> > > In an Ironic side twist, coincidental to one of the recently active threads
> > > in gnhlug-discuss, ESR is examining the issues he encountered whilst
> > > attempting to configure a printer using the CUPS GUI config tool.
> >  
> > AFAIK, CUPS has no GUI config tool.  There's the web interface and
> > the CLI.  Looks like he's describing how Red Hat bolted their GUI
> > configurator onto CUPS.
> 
> Hi Mark.
> Yup, you're right.  And he has made other similar errors in the article.
> See the user linux discussion list for details:
> 	http://lists.userlinux.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> 
> He is correct about the difficulty his "Aunt Tilly" would have 
> trying to use the existing printer over the small network were correct
> (Using that interface).
 
In this case, it's irrelevant.  It's the server that should be configured
properly.  The client will pick up on it.

> The principles he is espousing about how such an interface would work
> better by keeping the non-tech user in mind are something that I
> generally agree with, for all technical equipment.
 
> I have a few systems built here (RH 7.2 and K12LTSP based on RH 9) but 
> none of them seem to have KDEprint on them.  I would like to take a look
> at it so I'm going go install it.  Its nice to know some of the tools
> are designed better.

KDEprint supercedes qtcups.  There's also gtkprint(?) that does the
same thing.

> In the meantime - Does KDEprint show the user a list of the printers
> available on the network so that user's can select the one they are
> trying to use?
 
If CUPS knows about the printer, then yes.

> > Probe the network for what other kinds of systems are out there?  What
> > is he smoking?
> 
> I assume from this comment that you don't like the idea of probing the
> LAN for equipment inventory info.  This seems to have become a standard
> administrative techniques especially for network equipment.
 
Having each client probe each other machine for every protocol and
offering it has is just way too chatty.

> I understand the concern for extra traffic on the network but I'm
> wondering what technique you would use to have a system become
> automatically aware of other printers.  Should there be some type of
> service that the printer gets registered with so that systems requesting
> information about whats available can do it with a minimal amount of LAN
> traffic?
 
Ideally, that would be a CUPS server.  Clients can be conffigured to either
browse the network, or a few specific hosts, or any combination.  I'm not
sure if DHCP can pass where the CUPS servers are, but that's the ideal
way of doing it.  Otherwise, you can configure how often the browsing
takes place.  By default, I think it's 60 seconds.  Nothing is preventing
you from changing that to 30 minutes or an hour - it just means that
printing changes won't be seen by all clients immediately.

> (I'm aware that ESR is sometimes considered to be a sort of P.T. Barnum
> of the Linux world. Thats OK because it does result in more non-Linux
> people becoming aware that there is an alternative to Windows.)

But if all he's doing is (wrongly IMO) complaining about the UI, it
doesn't really help.

-Mark
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