Thanks to the OpenPrinting Database and the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS), printer support on GNU/Linux is much easier than it was at the turn of the millennium. However, one area in which support still lags is in the detection of ink levels in inkjet printers.

When Seiko Instruments said it is now offering Linux drivers for its Smart Label Printer 450 and offered to send me one to test, I was happy to hear it, because it seemed like an example of how Linux is being recognized for even non-mass-market hardware devices. While the printer does work as advertised, it is clear that Linux support is a work in progress.

Yesterday we kicked this whole thing off and took a look at Deskbar and Tracker. Today we turn our attention to X, the graphical subsystem of any Ubuntu (or Linux or Unix machine). As any existing Ubuntu user knows, not only do you need to configure X, but breakages can happen.

While Ubuntu 8.04 final will not be available until April, virt-manager and libvirt are already in the Hardy Heron repository and is one of the features for the Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 4 release, which is due out tomorrow. This is not the first time emerging Red Hat technologies are appearing in Ubuntu, but in Ubuntu 7.10 was system-config-printer and the Fedora-spawned IcedTea project for Java support via Sun's OpenJDK.

The Common UNIX Printing SystemTM, or CUPS, is the software you use to print from applications like the web browser you are using to read this page. It converts the page descriptions produced by your application (put a paragraph here, draw a line there, and so forth) into something your printer can understand and then sends the information to the printer for printing.

I reported about printers which work well with open source once in a while. This time, it was myself who needed a replacement for the fax machine, so I was looking for an all-in-one printer / scanner / copier / fax. And I found one which I really like.

The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the availability of the Linux Standard Base Driver Development Kit (LSB DDK) for print drivers.

Printer, camera, scanner--all detected and configured in less than 2 minutes. PCLinuxOS has knocked my socks off!

As we close in on the release of Ubuntu 7.10, codenamed Gutsy Gibbon during the development cycle, we thought we would tell you a little bit about some of the new features and improvements that make the release exciting. So over the next ten days, we will talk about one rocking feature each day until the 18th of October, when Ubuntu 7.10 goes live.