Official Squeeze release date target

It's the weekend of 5th and 6th February. Debianorg.

Debian Squeeze release candidate available

My previous post seems to have been a little premature- a poster on the same thread points out that Lenny was released two months after base-files was updated.
However, Squeeze has gone from being a beta to a release candidate. There's a download link on the thread.

Debian Squeeze release imminent?

It looks very much as though Squeeze has gone stable and the official release is imminent.

Group open windows in Gnome panel

I've been using Linux for four years, all that time the thought has been at the back of my mind that the bottom panel gets a bit full when I have multiple open windows. Something made me remember today that Windows used to group open windows when the taskbar was getting full. I quick Google search and I found that this is also possible in Gnome, although it's not the default. It's even possible to specify that windows are always grouped.
Simply right-click the little vertical "grip" bar to the left of the window list, and select preferences, as described here.
Doh!

HP Deskjet 3050 j610 on Debian Squeeze

HP Deskjet all-in-one printers are selling for silly prices at the moment. I recently saw a Deskjet 2050 j510 printer/scanner in PCWorld for £40 and was tempted. Then I saw the same printer in Asda for £35 and was even more tempted. Then I saw a HP Deskjet 3050 j610 wireless printer/scanner in PCWorld for £34 and almost couldn't resist- I just thought I should check compatibility with Linux.
The 2050 j510 will print with the version of HPLIP (Hewlett-Packard's Linux Imaging and Printing software) that comes with squeeze, but it won't scan (without a hack), whist the 3050 j610 will print and scan but requires the manual installation of the latest version of HPLIP from HP.
I ummed and arred for a bit. Then I checked the PCWorld web site and all the 3050 j610's had gone- Comet still had some at the same price. The next morning I needed to do a scan, so that clinched it- I went back to the Comet web site, reserved the printer, and was given a further discount, bringing the price down to £30.90.
That's a silly price because a basic HP printer is £40- no scanner, no wireless. (And also because I remember the first printer I bought- a nine pin dot matrix printer back in 1989, which coast me £220. I could seven 3050 j610's for that!)
Now the hairy part- could I get it to work?
I ran the installation wizard from the HP website, which has easy-to-follow instructions. I encountered a couple of dependency issues (well, this is a beta version of squeeze) which I thought for a while might be a nightmare to solve, but were in fact relatively simple to get around.
The first unmet dependency was for cupsys-bsd, which is not in the Squeeze repositories, but is in the Lenny repositories. The solution was to add the Lenny repositories to /ect/apt/sourses.list (just copy the Squeeze dependencies and change Squeeze to Lenny), reload Synaptic, install cupsys-bsd, and then remove the Lenny entries.
The second unmet dependency was for cups-image, which isn't in either repository. I was at a loss until I found this post, which solved the issue.
My new printer now prints and scans on Squeeze.



I haven't tried a wireless connection yet- I don't think laptop>printer is going to be supported, but a network connection via my router might be. Not really an issue as the printer with wireless was cheaper than the one without.
These HP all-in-one printers are certainly good value, and them come with full ink cartridges and a USB cable. The only problem for Linux users is that they are only supported by the most recent version of HPLIP, if at all. HP has a page to check if a particular printer is supported here. HP have made installing the latest version of HPLIP on Linux as easy as possible- I am running a beta version of Squeeze, so maybe that explains the issues I experienced. More up-to-date versions of HPLIP should find their way into Debian backports eventually, but if you're after a bargain printer now, a manual install might be the only option.

Update: Couldn't get wireless working. Had the same problem as this person.

Update 2: The printer is now connected over the network. Yipee! See link above for solution.

Update 3: I've just installed Debian Squeeze 6.03 on my laptop, and  didn't have any of the dependency issues mentioned in this post- which was for Squeeze Beta after all.

Update 4 (Feb 2012): HPLIP 3.11.12 does not currently work with Debian 6.0.4, meaning that printing won't work, with a Filter "usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip-hplip" for printer "*" not available error. If you are trying to install HPLIP via the installation wizard and automatic install mentioned in this post, check to see if the latest version of HPLP supports the latest version of Debian, or use the manual build and install for Debian. More here.

Return of the living dead

I've been testing Debian Squeeze beat for a while now, and I'm disappointed to find that a trio of annoying bugs that had appeared in Ubuntu just before I stopped using it are now in Squeeze.

• Copy and paste occasionally fails to work in Firefox (Iceweasel in Squeeze) web forms.
• Trying to safely remove USB hard drive results in a "Unable to stop drive" error message.
• In Movie Player in full screen, the controls disappear when hovered over after the screensaver has been on for a while. (Normal behaviour is obviously for the controls to appear when hovered over.)

These bugs are irritating. They'd be show stoppers if there was any other show in town.

Drat.

Update: two of these bugs (1&3) are actually the same bug in Compiz. See Return of the Living Dead Part II.

Secure that PC!

I really should change the title of this blog, as the title refers to computer security. Since buying a router and switching to Linux, I really haven't been that interested in the topic- my PC sits behind the router firewall and it's not vulnerable to Windows malware.
But today a couple of web pages caught my eye. The first was this page, a collection of anti-virus tests and and an attempt to collate the results. How useful the exercise is, is moot, but this test caught my eye. Partly because it's a review sponsored by Norton in which Norton comes out top (dubious) but mainly because it tests AV products on Windows XP SP2 with Internet Explorer 6 (even more dubious). That not even SP2 updated, that's SP2 as it was when it came out without any updates- by now as full of security vulnerabilities which can be levered to install malware as Swiss cheese is full of holes.
I would like to have seen the results obtained if the testers had used XP SP3 fully updated with IE8 or an alternative browser. My guess is that the system wouldn't have been infected even without any AV present, but that's not what Norton or any other AV company want you to hear.
Krebs on Security, the second page to catch my eye today, makes the point that it's often the non-Windows applications that are a security threat on Windows PCs:

A study released earlier this year found that the average Windows user has software from 22 vendors on her PC, and needs to install a new security update roughly every five days in order to use these programs safely.

Linux has the advantage here, because the popular Linux distros check most applications the user is likely to install on the computer to see if they are up to date; windows leaves third-party software unchecked- a nightmare until applications like Secunia came along.
(The main point of the article is that vulnerability counts don't mean anything by themselves- a very sensible point.)
The first line of defence on a Windows computer is ensuring that applications are kept up-to-date and secure, and , if necessary, avoiding applications with a poor security record, as Krebs has suggested in the past.
The second is probably ensuring users don't have admin rights, as Krebs has again suggested several times.
An AV is probably a good third line of defence. This is where those comparative tests come in. If the collation above has any merit, Panda, Avira, Avast! and AVG are the best free options.