Well, it has taken me 7 months (since I last posted--on migrating from Win XP to Ubuntu 9.10)--but by gum, I think I've got it!

For a couple of months now, I've been doing my computer user group (OMUG or Olympia Microcomputer Users Group) newsletter using Presentation (OO.org 3.1.1) (running Ubuntu). I decided to give it a try because it seems much easier to place things on the page than in Writer. One thing that is missing in Presentation is the function of connecting text boxes...

Finally!...I'm spending most of my time working in the Ubuntu half of my computer (multiboot). I gave up wishing the GUI networking stuff would work, and mounted my docs from the server using the command line; then automounted by editing /etc/fstab I had heard about this in my Linux group, but got the details by searching on the Internet.

I also have changed, mostly, the applications I use to those I can use in Ubuntu 9.10. There are still a couple of newsletters I am doing in Windows...

One of our volunteers has a Sony Vaio tiny laptop (the type now known as 'netbook'), several years old, given to her by a friend-- but with the hard drive removed (presumably to protect data). She had been using Knoppix, but couldn't get online. So...I set her up with Puppy Linux 430 on a CD + a USB flash drive for saving the pup_save file. Worked great.

One of the terrific things about Puppy is that it has a great record of getting connected to the Internet via modem (even some...

The last time I posted about printing I thought my problems were solved with 2 Puppy boxes telling the Mepis box where the printer was...

But shortly after that, Mepis decided the printer was attached to a Puppy box, and of course couldn't print...again!

So now we have 3 Puppy boxes...and they all know where the printer is, woof!

I've been having fits lately with the printing situation. Installed Mepis 8 on one of the networked computers hoping more media stuff would work...but what happened was that it messed up the...you guessed it: the printing situation! "Suddenly," as tech support so often reports hearing, none of the Mepis computers could find the printer (now shared via a small print server).

I've been getting lessons about computers talking to each other on a network. That idea was,...