Sunday, April 24, 2011

Printing To PDF using CUPS

CUPS-PDF is designed to produce PDF files in a heterogeneous network by providing a PDF printer on the central fileserver. It is available under the GPL and is packaged for many different distributions or can be built directly out of the source files.
Here are the steps to get working:
  • Use the "root" username and password.
  • Select the Administration tab and click "Find New Printers".
  • Click "Add This Printer" and then "Continue"(It may be automatically added)
And you are done.Select print from any application and start making PDFs.It saves generated pages on


/var/spool/cups-pdf/yourusername/
 
To change this, edit the /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf file. For example to store the PDF files in the "Desktop" directory in each user's home directory you may set:
Out ${HOME}/Desktop
 
Happy Printing To PDF. 
     
     
     
     

    Monday, April 18, 2011

    What Windows cannot do?


    Yet newcomers might think Windows is slick and can do almost anything. However there are some things and even many that Linux can do and Windows cannot.
    It cant give you the source code free of cost.
    It can’t let you write a program that can freely talk with the devices.
    It can’t stop spying on you.(Consider Alexa)
    It can’t resist people making modified and forged versions of Windows.
    It can’t stop forcing you to install different packs like Security Essentials and annoying Activation technologies.
    And much more...................................................................................................................................

    Friday, April 1, 2011

    Canterbury Distribution,a reality or an April fool?

    Debian, Gentoo, Grml, openSUSE and Arch Linux have unified to merge their effort to Canterbury project to develop an operating system based on all the features of these Linux distributions.This is a very good news but this day is April 1st and I hope that this is not a prank led on April.This is a great leap towards development of Linux.If this happens, then Windows will surely fall apart.
    On their words
    "We are pleased to announce the birth of the Canterbury distribution. Canterbury is a merge of the efforts of the community distributions formerly known as Debian, Gentoo, Grml, openSUSE and Arch Linux.
    The target is to produce a really unified effort and be able to stand up in a combined effort against proprietary operating systems, to show off that the Free Software community is actually able to work together for a common goal instead of creating more diversity."
    Following will perhaps be the consequences of this amalgamation:
      • Unified binary(RPM and DEB will be unified with interoperability)
      • Faster updates and greater helping community
      • Support for much larger spectrum of Hardware.
      • Polished user interface for novices.
    And much more.......
    Now it is time to wait and see.
    Have a look at these sites:
    openSUSE Homepage
    ArchLinux Homepage
    Debian Homepage
    Gentoo Homepage
    GRML Homepage


    Update: It was an April fool.