I am trying to install a new Konica Minolta printer on my recently downloaded fedora linux. The first instruction from minolta is "Copy the ppd file from the Printer Driver CD/DVD to the “/usr/share/cups/model” on the computer. Using "copy" and "paste" does not work as "paste" is always grayed out. Moving the icon via the mouse does not work with comment "permission denied". Clearly I need su privileges but don't know how to get them except in the terminal where I don't know the command to copy files. Help???

If the file is located on your Desktop
Open a terminal
login as root
If the file is not on your Desktop, first copy it from the CD/DVD to your Desktop.

Kind regards

Thanks that worked just fine. I just needed to know that copy was cp. Where can I get that manual which tells me the subtle expressions for these commands?

But meanwhile I am on the next instruction; which is: "start your browser and enter 'http://localhost631'" does not seem to work.

Ah, it does! there is supposed to be a colon between the t and the 6. It is very hard to see in the instructions. The top dot of the colon looks like it is part of the crossing of the "t" and the bottom dot appears to be an extension of the curled bottom of that same "t". Turns out to be relatively invisible in the instructions. I only just tried the colon while I was typing this because it looked like such a thing was a possibility.

Though the page displayed looked nothing like the one in the instructions, I used my head and am now printing with my new printer.

Thanks for the help.

Take a look at:
http://ss64.com/bash/
http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html

Kind regards

Here are some other useful references:

http://linux.about.com/. It's oriented to Ubuntu, but it's full of good info.

http://tille.garrels.be/training/tldp/. Machtelt Garrels Intro to Linux.

http://www.slackbook.org/. Slackware oriented, but excellent on the basics, such as file structure, permissions, and the like.

Memorize the command "apropos". An "apropos copy" will give you at least some hints on where to look. Another important command is "man". "man cp" shows you the manual page for the copy command.

For some indepth understanding of the power of the unix command line interface, I recommend "Unix Programming Environment" from Kerninghan and Pike. Yes, it's outdated, but I don't know about something better.

Where do you read these instructions? Is it a web page?

First, get used to use "copy & paste" in such cases. This is the best way not to make any typos and not to mismatch things like ' and '.

Second, make sure you have "msttcorefonts" installed. I am not sure on how to do this on Fedora ... this text indicates that it is not that easy:

http://technologytales.com/2009/07/2...nts-to-fedora/

Lots of web pages need these fonts to display "nicely" and easily readable.