New hardware installation: WinXP vs. Linux

[TransformX]

From: swfglug

For Christmas I received an all-in-one HP USB printer/scanner copier and an internal Sony IDE DVD-RW drive. Read on if you want a detailed comparison of installing both under GNU/Linux and Windows...

GNU/Linux installation:
Total time: ~10 minutes
Software packages to install: 1
Disk space used: 3 MB
Reboots required: None
Description: The Sony DRU510A required no configuration. Gnome Toaster asked me to select my burner with a dialog and the new drive was available. K3b chose the new drive by default. I was able to burn CDs with no configration changes. The HP All-In-One was slightly trickier. It was detected as a USB device (/dev/usb/lp0) and I was able to add it as a printer using the Red Hat Printing tool, using the hpijs driver which was already installed. It prompted me to restart the print server and a test page just worked. Scanning however required downloading the HP OfficeJet Linux Driver, an HP-sponsored project. I downloaded the driver and ran the standard commands:
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
(switch to administrator)
make install
then: ptal-init setup
ptal-init start

After this Xsane automatically found the scanner and I was able to scan images. There are some awesome command line tools that would come in really handy for administering remote printers, for example "ptal-hp display" which tells me what's currently displayed on the LCD. On GNU/Linux I use GIMP, so I didn't need to add photo editing software.

Because I have a multi-boot system, I also wanted to be able to burn disks, print, and scan from Windows too. I didn't realize what a headache I was in for...

Windows XP installation:
Total time: 2 hours
Software packages to install: 6
Disk space used: 750 MB
Reboots required: 8
Description: Due to helping friends install HP USB scanners, I knew to install the software first before hooking up USB hardware on Windows. Perusing the instructions confirmed this. So I placed in the HP CD and began the installation. I was prompted to remove Pagis, the software for my old scanner, which "conflicted". This required a reboot. I did so and started the installation again and plugged the USB cable in when instructed. Installation continued and a series of dialog boxes popped up and disappeared periodically in the background, mostly "Add New Hardware" and "Windows Installer" dialogs which the installer took care of. When all was done I was prompted for a reboot. When the system came back up, I successfully printed a test page, but the HP Director application showed only a View icon, no Scan, Fax, etc. Using Irfanview's Aquire feature I was able to scan using just the TWAIN driver, but I wanted to make sure the HP applications installed correctly. According to the guide, if all the icons didn't appear, the software should be reinstalled. I did so and rebooted as requested. This time the application installed correctly and HP Director had all the icons shown in the guide. Then I installed the photo editing applications which both required reboots after installation. I chose not to install the included Music Match software since I use WinAMP and ITunes to play music. (I'm not sure why it was included with a printer/scanner anyway.) On to the SONY DRU510A. It immediatly worked as a regular CD-ROM but my Nero software from my former CDRW would not see it as a recorder. Windows XP supported the drive as a DVD-ROM and CDRW, but not a DVD-RW. I ran the installation DVD and began installing the software. I chose to install Veritas DVD Now, Veritas Simple Backup, My DVD, and Veritas DX DVD. I left out some optional software like Sony's edition of Music Match and some other stuff. I installed them one by one, each one requiring a reboot except for the My DVD video editing software. DX also required uninstalling Nero, which required another reboot. After 2 hours, 8 reboots, and 750 MB of storage space used, my DVD-RW and printer/scanner were up and running.

Conclusion
To summarize, both devices work great under both operating systems and I'm very happy with them. Neither installation would have been a no-brainer for an end user. As an administrator/developer I found the GNU/Linux installation far quicker and less annoying. I'm sure the the future the HPOJ package will available as a package and the compile won't be required, but because I had to build from source to scan I can't recommend it to any GNU/Linux users who suffer from "command line fear" unless they're setup for me to assist remotely via SSH or VNC. The Windows setup was far more annoying than I expected. While a novice might have done OK with it if they knew the basics of uninstalling the old software packages for burning and scanning, they would have lost patience and called cousin Bill the family computer geek at some point or called the peripheral vendor's tech support, especially when the icons were missing from the director application. My system is not slow, and 2 hours is simply too long to spend getting peripherals working. So I would give the Sony DRU510A an A on GNU/Linux, it was effortless to setup. On Windows, I would give it a B- for outrageous hard drive space and time used during the install. ON GNU/Linux the HP PSC 2175 gets an A in printer installation and a C in scanner in installation (for the fact you have to compile the scanner driver). On Windows, I would give the All-In-One a C also, for the installation problems. However, after installation I give both the Sony DRU510A and the HP PSC 2175 an A on both platforms, they both work great and I hope they last far longer than the Cyberdrive CDRW and Xerox Workcenter they replaced.

[Kurt]

Now that you've switched from Nero to Veritas, which one has your vote?

[The PIT]

Well any OS wouldn't need a reboot if installed just 3mb.

HP stuff can be shitty at times got to admit also looks like you did one clean install while the other was an upgrade?

[Gurm]

Hmm... I installed my burner under Windows XP. Let's see.

Hardware Install:
30 seconds. (Gotta love sliding rails!)

Software Install:
0 seconds. It was already installed, since Nero recognized my drive on the first go.

Supplemental Install:
5 minutes. I tossed in RecordNow, Nero Recode, DVD Shrink, and a half dozen other things in 4 minutes, and then the reboot required to activate the new Patin-Couffin (err, I think that's what they're called) CD device access drivers took a whopping 40-45 seconds.

Y'know I think the world of you, TransformX. Really, I do. But sometimes I think you must have some kind of impairment. My machine is far from state-of-the-art, but it WORKS all the time.

- Gurm

P.S. My printer/scanner? About 10 minutes. It DID require 2 separate reboots that probably were completely unnecessary.

[TransformX]

Re: New hardware installation: WinXP vs. Linux

Originally posted by TransformX
From: swfglug

Gurm, check the title... It says from (website)
I posted it for you and others to comment.
When I install new hardware it usually takes 30-45 minutes because if I already opened the computer and started playing with wires, why not try tweaking other stuff as well (read: overclocking etc.)

edit: By the way, I don't receive stuff anymore, especially not for christmas because there is no christmas here. Most of the time I just go and buy the stuff I want myself .

[dZeus]

The DRU-510A has been supported with Nero 5.5.10.16 and up, which has been released around march 2003.

starting at which date did this Gnome toaster support the Sony drive?

Further more, if your Nero version would be lower than 5.5.10.16, then you can just download an update which is a fraction of the size of the full nero install. Can you 'update' gnome toaster, or will it redownload the whole binary of the new version? Is gnome toaster even responsible for addressing the dvd-writer (it says front-end for writing on their site)? If it's not compatible, good luck finding out which part of your linux install you have to update to support your drive.

the report is heavily biased, and it shows...

[Tjalfe]

./configure --prefix=/usr
make
(switch to administrator)
make install
then: ptal-init setup
ptal-init start

now it would probably take the average person alot more than 2 hours to figure out that this is the command to install a driver. In windows, even if it requires multiple reboots usually has an autoplay from the driver CD, which runs setup.exe.

Using my mom as an example of an average user, she would be able to do the windows install, but not the linux one.. ever.

[Ribbit]

@dZeus:

A DVD writer is a DVD writer - there's a standard command set etc. that should be common between them all. With that in mind, gnome-toaster (or whatever is actually responsible for addressing the hardware) has probably "supported" this drive since day one, while I have to ask why the hell Nero or any other software would need an update at all.

Ah yes, the wonders of the Windows world - where perfectly generic software is unnecessarily targeted to specific hardware...

[William]

Re: New hardware installation: WinXP vs. Linux

I was writing a long essay on what whoever the original author did wrong; but I think it can be summed up as he didn't know what he was doing on windows[1]; which is why it took him so long. Because he didn't understand what he was doing, he mistakenly installed a lot of unnecessary software.


[1] So in fact, he's proved himself wrong, because someone who didn't know what they were doing was quite able to install the windows packages

[dZeus]

Originally posted by Ribbit
@dZeus:

A DVD writer is a DVD writer - there's a standard command set etc. that should be common between them all. With that in mind, gnome-toaster (or whatever is actually responsible for addressing the hardware) has probably "supported" this drive since day one, while I have to ask why the hell Nero or any other software would need an update at all.

Ah yes, the wonders of the Windows world - where perfectly generic software is unnecessarily targeted to specific hardware...

oh, and every manufacturer sticks to the same command-set, just like they didn't do with CD-Writers? right

[Ribbit]

Well unless you're in the early days of the technology and there aren't any real standards (which I don't think counts here, since DVD burners are really just high-capacity CD burners), or you're LG and want to change certain standard commands to mean "render drive useless"

Now scanners, that's a different story...

[Gurm]

DVD burners are NOT just high-capacity CD burners. Not even close. DVD burning is barely out of the "black art" phase.

- Gurm

[Ribbit]

As far as the software is concerned, there isn't all that much difference.

[leech]

Ok to clarify a few things. Gnome-Toaster is a whole whopping 823kb as a binary on Debian. The Nero exe file itself is 1mb. That's not counting all the other crap that it installs.

Ok, to be fair let's include the actual program that detects the CD/DVD recorder and does the actual recording; cdrecord. It's 1180kb.

So we're looking at less than 2mb to record your DVD. Well, if we want to add in other tools to compare fully to Nero, it'd still be a lot less.

Onto the Printer/Scanner installation. I had to literally run the repair on WinXP to get it to work on my Mother's computer. It took a lot more than 2 hours to finally get it to install. This is after uninstalling it, using HP's own software uninstaller, and everything. Only running the repair actually worked, which of course meant that I had to redownload SP1 and DX9.0b plus all the updates.

Linux; I ran synaptic, selected the hpoj package, clicked execute. Wow, look at that, it downloaded, installed AND set up everything for me. The only other thing I had to do was look at hpijs.sourceforge.net and see that the driver to use was the DJ 3320 for the PSC 1210 that my Mother had. Wow look at that, it works flawlessly now in linux. Printing/Scanning and everything. All in a nice little package. Oh and NO reboots or compiles. In fact I can almost gaurantee that there IS HPOJ for whatever OS they were running, but it just wasn't on the CD, which is a shame. Something that common should be on the distro.

While linux is DIFFERENT, I wouldn't say it's any HARDER. Windows installs can be just as frustrating as linux installs. But at least with most linux things there is a log created for those that know how to read them. Windows either just chugs along, not letting the user know that anything is wrong, or just gives some weird error that only Steven Hawking on Pot could read.

Leech

[leech]

Originally posted by Gurm
DVD burners are NOT just high-capacity CD burners. Not even close. DVD burning is barely out of the "black art" phase.

- Gurm

'cdrecord -scanbus' will more than likely show your DVD-burner and will work with it.

While I agree with your statement that DVD burners aren't just high-capacity CD burners, I do think they both will allow packet writing, which in essence WILL make them just higher capacity CD's. So you're both right.

Leech