Linux has been an operating system in vogue lately, and with good reason. It offers a very viable alternative to proprietary operating systems, chief among them being Microsoft Corporation’s Windows OS, and Apple Inc.’s Macintosh OS. It has moved on from a nascent stage of catering to only open source enthusiasts to a more generalized category of people. Distributions such as Ubuntu are geared towards a demanding audience that comprises of more than tech geeks. However, it can be a big ask of a novice (to the world of Linux) to completely move on from the proprietary operating system he/she has been using always. The only viable alternative left is to find a sort of middle ground, and that is, to have the old and the new operating systems to run together at the same time. This will ensure that the individual has enough time to have trial runs and a sufficient teething period in the new environment (while he/she learns how to use Linux in general), while also leaving the option of falling back to the old operating system for general tasks. Thus, this article deals with how to use Linux in a dual boot system.

For the sake of convenience, let us assume that your system already has a copy of Microsoft Windows 7 running on it, and you are trying to install a copy of the Ubuntu Linux distribution on it. What you need to do is to download the ISO image of Ubuntu from the Canonical website, and burn it on a CD/DVD. You can also order a disk from Canonical, who deliver it to you in a few weeks. When that is done, you need to enter the disk during the boot of the Windows system. It will bring up a black window with a menu and Ubuntu based designs. The menu will have 5 options, of which the first two are actually relevant. The first one will ask if you want to try Ubuntu without any change to your computer – this means that it will be a Live CD installation where the Linux operating system runs from your RAM. You can actually get to learn how to use Linux without it being installed permanently through the Live CD method, but note that you cannot save any file or do any permanent actions in that state. The second option is to install Ubuntu. To get started with the dual boot, you need to select that option.

You will eventually come to a window that asks you to ‘prepare disk space’. You will see the OS you are currently using (that is, Windows 7), along with the total space available in your hard disk. Below that are options to install the operating systems side by side, erase and use the entire disk and to manually edit the partitions. For a beginner wanting to learn how to use Linux, choosing the first option is the most judicious way to proceed. You will need to decide exactly how much disk space you want to allocate to Ubuntu in the meanwhile as well. The following window will require the entry of the login credentials needed for Linux. Choose your password especially carefully – not only as a safety measure, but also as something that you can type effortlessly, as you will need to enter it rather often in Linux, even after you are logged in. While you continue to learn how to use Linux, you will come across plenty of instances where your actions will be restricted by the Linux system, so as to protect the system files from incurring any damage. This will be an interesting, though occasionally annoying version of the User Account Control privilege system that had been so roundly criticized by Windows Vista users. It needs a certain level of getting used to, but beyond that, it becomes second nature to a regular Linux user.

After the setup is complete, the system will restart with a new, ‘GRUB’ bootloader, that will ask you to choose between Ubuntu, Windows 7 and memory diagnostic tests. All that remains is for you to choose between them, depending on whether you’re in the mood for learning more of how to use Linux, or prefer a familiar environment. All in all, that is all it takes to set up a Linux and Windows dual boot system as a beginner to the world of Linux.

Linux is a free open source operating system developed by Linus Torvalds. He made it available to general public through General public license (GNU). According to this license, you can alter, modify, develop and redistribute the software with same privilege that you acquired when you download it. Being a open source software, it has been extensively modified and altered by many developer communities. These enhanced operating systems are available for use and distribution as free or paid products. You might find it difficult to figure out the best Linux operating system. Some of the best Linux operating systems are:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop is for household and personal use. They also form a part of workgroup. Considering the minimal demands on the personal computers, it provides applications, which are necessary with great stability, efficiency, usability and security features. It makes it easier for the users to maintain, such as system defragmentation and no virus threat. Also unanimous with usage, it supports number of third-party applications, their simpler upgrades and add-ons. Application such as OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice provide complete office suite including writer, drawing, spreadsheet, presentation and database. The output formats are of industry standards, which make its users to share their work easily with others. This is rated by the best Linux operating system by its users.

Linux Mint Debian Edition: Linux Mint is highly feasible and comfortable product because of its smooth graphical user interfaces, which include software manager. Highly visualizing services about the impact of installation such as remaining disk drive space and the layout of the software and its application information are industry standard features. The update manager is not limited to upgrading major applications but a mini version lets the users look for add-ons for the installed applications. Very fast boot sequence in black window with no logo or loading dots making it relatively easy to use live CD.

Debian: Debian is developed by Ian Murdock. Many latest operating systems are based on the Debian kernel. It is very reliable, virus free, stable, high performance sofware, controllable and easy maintainable. The distributions are available as CD/DVD, live CD for 32 and 64-bit processors. Number of packages are the part of distributions as administrative utilities, LISP, language packs, Mono/CLI, mathematics, communication programs, mail, databases, network, libraries, Perl, PHP, python, Ruby, games, fonts, GNOME, text processing, shells, sound, graphics and ham radio. People consider it as the best Linux operating system.

OpenSUSE: It is developed by Roland Dyroff, Hubert Mantel, Thomas Fehr and Burchard Steinbild. It comes with a number of application softwares, network management tools and user manual. It is distributable and installed using YaST graphical and RPM packages. XFCE brings the remote operations particularly convenient with filesystem browsing support and file progress dialogs. Tumbleweed lets you upgrade the application while they are still installed on your system, not requiring reinstall. Skrooge lets the user manage his budget with this software while KMyMoney lets export the reports about your financial situation.

Ubuntu: Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux distribution developed by Mark Shutteworth. Distributed as CD/DVD and live CD/DVD available for 32 and 64-bit processor of Intel and AMD types can installed on servers, desktops, mobile phones, netbooks, mainframes and supercomputers. It can be recommended because of its high performance speed and ease to use. You can perform many tasks, which you can do with any Windows or other operating systems, such as locating files, system management, web browsing, creating documents such as spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, database and writer, locate apps, view photos and play multimedia files such as audio and videos. For installation, you will require 1 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 15 GB of hard-drive space, 800 x 600 screen resolution, a CD/DVD installation media.

Kubuntu: Kubuntu is so called because it uses KDE desktop environment instead of Unity as in Ubuntu. It requires 384 MB RAM, 3-4 GB hard drive space and can be dual-installed with Windows. A number of applications are supported to make it feasible for general-purpose use. It includes web browsers such as Firefox,Opera, LibreOffice, system management utilities, and messengers. PeaZip is the free software for file and archiving. The files are available as cross platform compatibility. SoundKonverter is another open source software for converting audio files to different formats.

Xubuntu: Xubuntu is the Ubuntu-based Linux operating system. A number of packages such as oneiric for PDF document handling utilities, bins that help generating HTML photo albums using XML and EXIF tag are available as the part of the distributions on CD/DVD and live CD/DVD.

VMware has announced a new technology called VMware AppBlaster, that will allow to remote applications from any OS to any OS using any HTML 5 web browsers. This means when AppBlaster is released you will be able to run any application under any OS you desire as long you have an HTML 5 web browser (Did some one scream Chrome Browser on Google chrome netbook?). Although when VMware announced the technology in VMworld 2011 did not mention anything about  Google chrome netbook, but guess what browser was used in the demonstration!! You guessed it right Google Chrome Browser, though it was running on Apple MAC in the demo but that does not make a different a Chrome Browser is a Chrome Browser nonetheless the OS it runs on. The funny part the presenter has mentioned Chrome Browser during the demo at least twice!! Don’t get me wrong, I am not implicating that VMware is doing this to help Google Chrome Netbooks to take over the netbook/laptop market, but Google Chrome Netbooks will definitively benefit from that.

You might think its a crazy thought. but let me help your imagination in here. Imagine you have just powered on your Samsung Chromebook Series 5 netbook with less than 10 seconds from the time you pushed the power button to the time you fired your Chrome Browser. Then after that inside the Chrome browser you click the Microsoft Visio 2010 icon & start working on your Visio diagram with the full MS Visio 2010 bells and whistles from your little Chrome Netbook. Then after that you open Microsft Word, Excel just as you would on a Windows Machine. After that you fire up some of your Linux tools like GIMP to edit your images. Imagine all this coming to your small Chromium Netbook that is already connected to the web all the time without the need for any client or agent on your machine which is not usually possible to install on Chromium Netbooks. All delivered through HTML 5. A picture is worth 100s of words, but a video is worth millions of words. You might want to check the below video to get an idea of VMware AppBlaster and see how well it works on a Chrome Browser.

I believe such technology will change the way we access our applications for ever. I mean think about it. At the moment most of the applications we use is installed on the devices we use. In the other hand, VMware AppBlaster will allow service/Application providers to deliver any application that End users are using today as a service. That means you will not need to install the application on your machine to use it, but all you will ever need is an HTML 5 ready browser to access your applications. This totally fit inline with Google idea of Google Chromium netbooks. Google idea was that the most used item in a user machine today is the browser, if we can give him a quicker & safer browser and nothing more we will still attract a good amount of users with these quicky netbooks. The problem was still all these applications that people used to in their earlier life & still want to access from their netbooks. Its the main reason why many people did not believe Google Chrome netbooks will have a great success. Now with VMware AppBlaster the game will change & users will be able to access any applications from their Google Chrome Netbooks. I believe Google has hit the Bingo this time with their Chrome netbooks by being the first to enter the market, where people thought its too early for it. Now the other players in the market will have to play the catch up game with Google Chrome netbooks on one side & with VMware AppBlaster on the other side.

I believe VMware is offering the world a great technology with VMware AppBlaster as it will allow companies to serve their existing applications from the Cloud with all the security required without having to rewrite them from scratch. This will definitely speed up Cloud Computing adoption. In the other hand, I am sure this will be the greatest gift anyone could give to Google to improve its Google Chrome Netbooks adoption. The same Google Chrome Netbook that were meant to only run the web through the Chrome web browser will be able to run most of the user applications without any problem from inside the Chrome web browser. I believe this good news will not only benefit Google, but Google Chrome Netbook manufacture like Acer and Samsung will be the one to most benefits of the technology as it will put their branded Google Chrome Netbooks sales on fire. Further, I am sure many Public Cloud Providers will be in rush to offer such a service, as these applications will be accessible through every type of End user devices that can run any HTML 5 web browser.

Dual booting is a common practice with plenty of Linux users. Dual booting refers to the act of installing two separate operating systems on the same computer. Each OS is given its own partition, which tends to be inaccessible for all practical purposes to the other OS. Transferring files between two systems can prove to be a significant challenge, and this article deals with sorting out an issue like that.

Assuming that both the operating systems installed in the dual boot are Linux distributions, the default option is to install every application, etc. in the same file system. This is an issue that can arise due to there being no discrete \home partitions. This makes it important to decide to make a common directory of the installs within that \home partition. Moreover, you need to decide which install will actually contain the files. Let’s assume that they are placed in Linux Distro_a. The next step would be to mount distro_a to distro_b. This can be done by the following terminal command:

sudo mkdir –p /mnt/distro_a

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

/dev/sda1 /mnt/distro_a ext4 defaults 0 0

The above code makes an assumption that the distro_a is installed to /dev/sda1. If it isn’t, modify the line of code accordingly. After that:

sudo mount –a

ls /mnt/distro_a

The second line should return the contents of distro_a. You can make the directories in the home of distro_a visible in distro_b by the following:

cd

ln –s /mnt/distro_a/home/user/userdirectory .

“userdirectory” is the actual file directory from which you seek to transfer files, for instance, the videos, music, photos directories, among others.

The first command ensures that you end up in your home directory. After that, you create symbolic links from the directories you want to share into home, replacing the user name of distro_b with the user name of distro_a. A dot following any string indicates the exact location of your current directory. You can choose to share just a single directory, and keep the files you want to share in the subdirectories of the directory. In order to create minimal trouble with granting user permissions, it is optimal to have the same user ID in both the distros.

Making another assumption that the users created are the first users on their respective distros, they will both have a user ID of 1000 on most distros. This approach does have a slight hitch, however. It makes it necessary for the distro_a to be kept installed, so as to have continuous access to the files. An alternative to do away with this issue would be using Gparted. This creates extra partitions in your system, so as to free up some hard disk space, and also create unique file systems. They can then be mounted within the home directory of each distro.

It is certainly possible to handle both separate and combined file systems with a dual boot, and get to transfer files in between them as well. As long as the factor of user permissions is paid special attention to, there shouldn’t be any problem in file sharing between two Linux operating systems.

KDE and GNOME are two of the most popular desktop environments on the Linux operating system. They are developed by two separate communities of developers, with some APIs that are unique and the others, which are common. This makes it easier for third party applications to be developed, as well as there is a common environment to work on. As an end user, you may find each of them to have their own strengths and weaknesses, and depending on which of the two align to your needs more, there can be a significant level of variation in usability.

The KDE and GNOME variants of common distros are often characterized by their naming system itself. For instance, Ubuntu’s default desktop environment is GNOME, while the KDE variant is known as Kubuntu.

For starters, if you look at the plainly superficial and cosmetic differences between the two environments, GNOME is a relatively low frill, dark color favoring desktop environment. On the other hand, KDE has a more aesthetic touch to it, with plenty of sky blues throughout the interface. Moreover, KDE is based on a single button menu style, akin to Microsoft’s Windows. On the other hand, GNOME has multiple buttons for each part of the initial menu.
If you move on to more practical differences, operations like a file renaming process are handled differently in both KDE and GNOME. GNOME handles such processes inline, and does not allow changing of file extensions. In KDE, however, the default option lets you modify the file extension as well.

In case you try to fiddle with any settings, KDE is a rare but safer option. It is an environment with great similarities to Microsoft Windows, in terms of the two-step permission control (that is, saving, and then apply. On the other hand, GNOME simply accepts your choice with one click, and implements it straightaway. Moreover, KDE’s shut down process itself asks you to authorize the terminal, and close it completely in case it is a virtual one. In GNOME, there is a dedicated shutting down button, that on clicking gives you more options like hibernation, restarts, logging off, switching users, etc.

Long story short, KDE focuses on providing its users a highly feature rich interface. Graphical interfaces are used to handle the configuration throughout. Depending on your individual tastes, KDE may come across as highly versatile and powerful, or it may seem to be too careful and convoluted for a beginner to use effectively.

The GNOME environment follows a sense of aesthetics that is nearly Spartan and austere. In the search for usability, many of the lesser used settings are buried deep within menus. Thus, at the cost of an uncluttered user experience, there can be a distinct loss in functionality perceived.

All in all, the two desktop environments provide almost exactly the same functionality; just that the way they go about it can vary greatly. The most interesting part is for the end: in case you still can’t decide which of the two you prefer, you can use them both, and switch when you need to.

The Apache HTTP server is a software package used to run and maintain web servers. It was and is hugely popular; from the initial growth of the Internet to the current scenario, Apache is said to serve every two out of three websites.

Apache is frequently used in tandem with the Linux networking environment, making them both invaluable to plenty of web servers. In light of the huge amount of traffic website servers need to handle, it is essential that the Apache software’s performance is optimised to the fullest.

There undoubtedly are physical approaches that can be followed in server optimisation. You can set up dedicated physical servers (computers/machines that specifically serve web pages), distributed servers (computers that redirect you to other dedicated servers to serve page content), etc. But the most logical and economical first step would be to modify the parameters of your Apache software settings to adapt to the kind of load you expect.

Apache’s performance optimisation settings are actually directives in the httpd.conf file.

The Timeout directive handles the amount of time the server is expected to wait before sending a timeout ping (which indicates that the server can’t be reached). The Timeout directive’s actual value is the number of seconds that the server will wait for a response.

The Keepalive directive controls whether to permit continuous connections. These connections entail handling multiple page requests, heavily increasing the traffic your server needs to handle. Putting the Keepalive directive to the ‘on’ setting can increase the speed and ease at which users can access server content. However, it also leads to users staying connected to your server for a much longer time than before, as their connections are, quite literally, ‘kept alive’.

The MaxKeepAliveRequests directive is an extension of the KeepAlive directive. It specifies the number of page requests a single connection can make before dictating that the client needs to connect to the server again. When you set this directive to a high value, clients can stay on the server for a long time, with a lesser chance of the server expelling them.

The KeepAliveTimeout directive deals with continuous connections as well. It determines the amount of time (in seconds) your server will wait for the next page request from a continuous connection before letting it onto the server again. It functions as a sort of temporary ban on continuous connections to reduce server traffic.

Prefork MPM is unlike the directives stated above, as strictly speaking, it isn’t a directive. Instead, it is an Apache module that specifies the number of Apache processes that can be running simultaneously. It also specifies how the processes will manage multiple connections coming into the server. The directives contained inside the MPM module have their unique uses to dictate how the server handles incoming load:

· MinSpareServers: It states the minimum number of idle processes that wait for incoming connections.

· MaxSpareServer: It states the maximum number of idle processes that can run before Apache starts shutting them down.

· MaxClients: The total number of Apache processes that can be running simultaneously at any given time.

Apache is and has always been the most widely used web server software. Moreover, it is free and comes with almost all Linux distros. Being a powerful and versatile software, it can get rather tricky to handle at times, but with the correct tweaks, it can lead to extremely efficient web server performance.

Ubuntu is a relatively new Linux distribution, based on Debian. It is a free operating system that unabashedly welcomes people to download and share it. Despite being owned by a UK-based company called Canonical Ltd., it retains its open source roots completely, so much as to its very name being derived from an African philosophy that stresses on ‘humanity’.

Canonical releases a new version of Ubuntu every six months, so as to keep the OS absolutely up to date, and revamped, if need be. It also guarantees long term support for each major release for at least five years.

Ubuntu’s considerable popularity can be put down to two major reasons: the first is an intense effort to be friendly and useful to both newcomers (to the Linux platform), as well as advanced, power users; there have been concerted efforts to make users habituated to proprietary operating systems like Mac OSX and Windows feel at home with the Ubuntu interface. Plenty of excellent, open source alternatives to proprietary software are also available in Ubuntu straight out of the box. For example, OpenOffice and GIMP are both highly functional and free alternatives to Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, respectively. The second major reason for Ubuntu’s popularity is the sheer amount of resources and help made available to the Ubuntu community. In fact, Canonical Ltd. makes it extremely easy for anyone to get an Ubuntu DVD, for absolutely no cost at all, regardless of where they stay.

Ubuntu itself has a number of flavors to cater to its target audiences. Edubuntu is geared towards educational purposes, and youngsters; Kubuntu is a version of Ubuntu that caters to users who prefer the KDE Desktop Manager, instead of the default GNOME Manager available in Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is notable in the number of system admin tools it makes available to a power user as well. The traditional terminal is present, making it a breeze to use the classic apt-get command to get what you need out of Ubuntu. The Synaptic Update Manager is a phenomenally powerful GUI based update manager, which simplifies the task of getting packages and repositories for the Ubuntu operating system. Moreover, the fact that Ubuntu is more user-oriented than any other Linux distribution is amply proved by the fact that it places lesser restrictions on a normal user to perform privileged tasks (in most other distros, there is a high amount of control that the operating system places on the user, rather than the other way round).

As a non-proprietary operating system, Ubuntu is far more transparent and supportive of users who actually want to innovate and mess around with source code than any of its proprietary counterparts. With a burgeoning user community, there is a lot of stress laid on a do-it-yourself ethic to tinker with the system. As a user, you can approach the communities, in case anything does go wrong; in all likelihood, your queries will be resolved with a mix of speed and friendliness. The Ubuntu model is probably the Web 2.0 of operating systems, where user collaboration is valued above all else; if its current success is any sign, there needs to be a paradigm shift in the approach followed by giants like Microsoft and Apple for their own operating systems.

User account creation is one of the rare aspects of Linux administration where using text (command line) mode really isn’t any more challenging than using the usual graphical user interface tool. It goes without saying that it is an approachable step for a Linux newbie, and can go a long way in getting an idea about how to proceed in a command line environment.

The most obvious way to go about creating a user account is to use the useradd utility. Adduser is an alternative, which works exactly the same way as useradd (though it may or may not be present in all systems). For all practical purposes, they can be considered to be one and the same.

These utilities make account creation highly convenient and easy. The useradd command works as a function on a bigger and more complex scale. It accepts a number of options as arguments. In each case, an option is essentially a piece of information about the user whose account is being created. For instance, if you want to create a new user account for a user whose name is John, you need to know the UID (Unique ID) you want to assign him, what his default shell would be, what his home directory would be, and finally, the password he’d want for his account. Let’s say that this user is going to have a UID number of 500; /bin/bash is to be his default shell; /home/harry is to be his home directory, and his password is 12345 initially. The command to do all this would be as follows:

useradd -u 500 -s /bin/bash -d /home/john -p 12345 john

The ‘-u’, ‘-s’, etc. in the command above are options to modify the behaviour of the utility. Below are few of the most utilized options:

‘-u’ refers to a numeric user ID;

‘-g’ refers to a numeric default group ID;

‘-G’ indicates that the user (John) may belong to more than one group;

‘-d’ refers to the home directory;

‘-s’ is the default shell;

‘-c’ is used to add a comment (e.g. additional information that can be used to identify the user);

‘-e’ is used to set an expiry date to a particular account, so as to make it stop working beyond a particular point of time.

Some of the ‘options’ (information pieces about the user) are not compulsory. E.g., the shell, home directory, and numeric ID are given default, sequentially allotted values if you choose not to explicitly specify them. As a general rule of thumb, you ought to specify a numeric ID only if you have an exact reason to do so. For instance, if you are shifting a user’s account from another computer, you might need it to have the same ID number on the new machine. In more generalized cases, however, you can let the machine assign numeric IDs.

A major advantage of getting used to the text mode for user account creation is that the text mode is almost exactly the same in all Linux distributions. The same doesn’t hold for graphical modes for account creation, as there tends to be a wide disparity between the interface offerings. All in all, despite the intimidation that a Linux newcomer might feel with command lines and text-only modes, user account creation is among the easiest command-based actions possible in Linux.

The Linux environment provides a number of protocols that are intended to create and administer networks, both simple and complex. Networks are the foundations of modern communications, and Linux-based networks account for quite a number of them.

TCP/IP is a layered network protocol first developed by the US Department of Defense for providing a communications bridge between computers of different makes. The protocol essentially aimed to keep the software and hardware portions of networking away from each other so as to avoid any potential conflicts. TCP/IP’s complete focus on interoperability and bridging has made it extremely popular for its focus on usability as opposed to semantics. This protocol is completely integrated into the Linux kernel, and is extremely popular due to its efficiency.

TCP/IPv6 is a modernized upgrade to the original TCP/IP (v4) protocol that gives the old protocol a number of tweaks to make it work in the current day and age. It is also made in a way so as to be future-proof. A major issue with IPv4 has been the dwindling number of IP addresses actually left free now. The massive, phenomenal growth of the internet was unprecedented, and the IPv4 was not expected to be a protocol that could be outdated anytime soon, but it is on the verge of it now. IPv6 will make the routing process a lot more efficient and powerful than before.

IPX/SPX stands for Internet Packet Exchange/Sequenced packet Exchange. It is a set of commercial protocols developed by Novell Inc. It has been used primarily in Novell’s Netware over the last few decades, which in turn is the OS of choice for networking professionals.

AppleTalk Protocol Suite is the networking stack created by Apple Inc. it focuses more on P2P protocols, that allows sharing of printers and files. Any machine can be both client and server at the very same time. Linux offers a complete experience in Appletalk networking, and, coupled with implementations like Netatalk, you can access the necessary printer over PAP.

ISDN: The Linux operating system has ISDN completely integrated into it. Special devices based on this protocol can be used to copy and emulate a modem with just a few commands.

PPP, SLIP, PLIP: PPP stands for point-to-point protocol, SLIP is Serial line IP, and PLIP is a parallel line IP. PPP is most commonly used by individual computer owners to access the internet services. PLIP is geared towards local connections, but allows a quick, economical connection between two devices.

Amateur Radio: The Linux operating system, for all that naysayers have said about it, ends up having a number of new features. One of these would be the Amateur Radio. It is a protocol that is meant to support amateur radio. It offers support to the AX25 protocol too. It provides for both connected and non-connected operation modes. It can even carry other protocols like TCP/IP. The fact that the structure is complicated (as compared to the protocols it carries make it useful in not just the amateur radio environment, but other applications and extensions too.

Linux offers a plethora of choices for every aspect of the operating system, and that applies to its networking capabilities too.

I have recently bought an EPSON Stylus Office TX510FN Printer & wanted to install it on my Ubuntu box. I have had a bit of difficulties at first try as the driver was not included in Ubuntu by default. After few minutes of searching the internet, I have found the driver at:

Epson Inkjet Printer Stylus Office tx510fn series 1.0.0-1lsb3.2 Driver 32-Bit Debian Driver (Work for Ubuntu 32-bit as well other 32-bit Debian)

Epson Inkjet Printer Stylus Office tx510fn series 1.0.0-1lsb3.2 Driver 64-Bit Debian Driver (Works for Ubuntu 64-bit as well other 64-bit Debian) (The one I am using)

For other users who is not using Debian but RPM based Linux, RPM packages can be found out as well at:

Epson Stylus Office tx510fn Series 32-Bit RPM Driver (Should work for RedHat Linux and other similar RPM based 32-bit distros)

Epson Stylus Office tx510fn Series 32-Bit RPM Driver (Should work for RedHat Linux and other similar RPM based 64-bit distros)

To be honest, the only one I have tested is the Debian 64-bit Drivers as I am currently running Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit though the others should be of help to other Distros and platform users. The instructions below is how I got it my EPSON Stylus Office TX510FN Printer working on Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit using the Debian 64-bit driver provided above. The instructions are straight forward & really easy to do, and a step by step of it is below. These instructions assume u are connecting it through network, which is most probably u are.

1- Install the .deb package you have just downloaded from the link provided earlier as you would normally do for any other package by double clicking it.

2- After the package has been installed go to: Applications ==> Systems => Printing

3- Hit Add Printer

4- Under Select Device Choose AppSocket/HP JetDirect

5- In the host field fill the IP of your EPSON Stylus Office TX510fn Printer, you can find the IP from the LCD screen on the printer it self using the menu button & going to network settings. Then Hit forward

6- Choose the EPSON Stylus Office TX510FN Driver from under the EPSON drivers choices. Note that this driver was not there before installing the provided Debian package.

7- Fill the Printer Name with the desired printer name, & hit Apply

8- To ensure everything is working correctly, try to print a test page.

The EPSON Stylus Office TX510FN printer work quite well with Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit, so if you are considering a printer it might be a good choice that is compatible with Ubuntu. I just put this post for any one who want to ensure if this printer work with Ubuntu & for others who bought it and did not figure out how to get it to work. Its simple and easy & do the job. Happy Printing!!!