1. I just installed FC 5, ver 2.6. My printer is USB but it doesn't work. From reading the forums I understand that USB in Linux doesn't work a lot. Can you use any USB devices in Linux?

2. Also, as this forum name indicates, I'm a "newbie". I recently got this response to the question, "Is there an equivalent to Device Manager in Linux?":

"Yes. It is called the "/dev" directory.

Or maybe try hal-device-manager or gnome-device-manager."


What do these things mean? Are they commands? How do you execute them and WHERE?

3. Also is there an equivalent for Start>Run (in Windows) in Linux?

You haven't supplied any information that will allow anyone to help you with your printer problem.

On the last question, If you use KDE, you can press [Alt]-F2 to bring up a run dialog. You can also install it on the toolbar. If you use Gnome, you may want to read through your manuals. Most of your questions will probably be answered there.

About 90% of USB devices "just work" in FC5; you just plug them in. It's actually easier than in Windows, because you don't have to run the installation CD.

What printer do you have?

The closest thing to the device manager in FC5 is the hardware browser. It's an optional install. Open a terminal window as root and enter the command:

yum -y install hwbrowser

You will then see in your menu: System->Administration->Hardware

To get the equivalent to Start->Run in Linux: Alt-F2.

Need info on printer make and model.
Check out http://www.linuxprinting.org/cups-doc.html for info.

Not really a device manager in linux. There are a few tools that can tell you about the hardware. /dev is a directory that contains device blocks. In a crude way this is where devices communicate to the kernel. Some of them you can do a command like ' cat /dev/ttyUSB0 ' and see what is going on that block device. Hal is a newer tool that helps see new devices and load the apporiate module for it if in its database. One other tool on boot is called kudzu. It see if the hardware has changed since last reboot and helps edit some files like /etc/modprobe.conf and others. Not the greatest tool but does help some. Many of this things are what is called services. To start one as root of course you type ' service --status-all ' to see what services or daemons are running? You can then google up on them to understand what they are. Or one can use the man command. ' man kudzu '. Once you understand the structure of the man files they really help a lot.

last one jschiwal says it all. Not sure in Gnome either.

Brian1

For #1 as jschiwal said we probably need more information. The quick answer is that there are USB devices that work, I think the ones that don't have more to do with the actual device, not that it's USB. For printers, a good place to look is http://linuxprinting.org/

For #2, you really should reply to the orginal thread rather than asking somewhere else, but the answer about /dev is a bit of a joke I think. Linux treats devices as files, which are all located in /dev, but what all those files mean is probably a bit beyond you right now (and me for a lot of them). The other part of the answer is probably commands that you can type into the terminal. How exactly to bring that up depends on the desktop envionment you use. There's might something in a menu that also brings up a device manager, but again that depends on the desktop you use.

Same for #3.

If it is a HP inkjet or laser jet printer that you have, I would recommend installing the hplip package.
Also make sure you have cups installed.

You can configure cups with the cups web interface. Point your web browser to http://localhost:631 .
Before doing that, I would recommend making yourself a cups administrator with the root command: lppasswd -a <your user name>[ENTER KEY]
<your password>

Then when a username/password dialog pops up using the web interface, enter your regular username and password. This works better, since cups doesn't run as root, and entering root and the root password may not work. This will get you through a small hurdle.

The linuxprinting website will have a list of printer models that are supported.