Launchpad's PPA

Hey. I was updating my previously made transmission package to version 1.21 and in between I came across Launchpad's Personal Package Archives (PPA), which gave me 1GB APT repository with automated binary build for x86 and AMD64. It has web interface for searching packages and was very easy to use. All I did was uploaded a signed source package and the server did the rest; building binaries and indexing and adding packages the repository. Well, that's the first time I use such service, so maybe that's why it's very interesting to me : ))

Here is what you need to add to your software sources to get updates:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/masoodbeh/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/masoodbeh/ubuntu hardy main

Transmission 1.20 Hardy Packages

Hey. Yesterday I thought of setting up a small repository of Hardy packages as an exercise after reading Debian New Maintainers' Guide. So, I grabbed the official source package of transmission from Hardy's repository and the new 1.20 source code.

At first, it looked like I had to do a lot of configurations but thanks to free software community, all I needed to do was copying old control files, updating package info and issuing a single command, dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot to build the package. Of course, it could have been harder if I didn't have the previously made source package ready but fortunately in most cases someone else has already built a version of that software.

Well, I've just opened a free account on freehostia and uploaded the packages there. If you are interested, add the repository and enjoy the bleeding-edge Transmission on your Hardy ;)

wget -q http://masoodbeh.freehostia.com/repositories/hot/DF405F92.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add - 
sudo wget http://masoodbeh.freehostia.com/repositories/hot/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hot.list 

Brother MFC665 New Linux Drivers

I've been using version 1.0.0 of Brother MFC-665CW multifunction printer on Gutsy (AMD64) for over a year until recently I upgraded to Hardy. I thought I better give the newer, 1.0.1, drivers a go since the older version package installation was cumbersome and printing itself was slow.

Unfortunately, a bug which also existed in previous version still exists and causes the installation of Debian packages for both LPR and CUPS Wrapper fail to complete. Fortunately, the fix is just a simple directory creation this time, /var/spool/lpd/mfc665cw and /usr/share/cups/model, before installing the packages. Well, no native packages for AMD64 yet so the usual --force-architecture option to dpkg is required. If your printer is attached to a network, you need to set "Device URI" in Printing.

I forgot to mention that printing speed is considerably faster than previous version but I don't know who should get the credit, the cool new driver or the superb distribution. Both rock : ))

Below are the direct link to drivers:
http://solutions.brother.com/Library/sol/printer/linux/rpmfiles/lpr_debian/mfc665cwlpr-1.0.1-1.i386.deb
http://solutions.brother.com/Library/sol/printer/linux/rpmfiles/cups_wrapper/mfc665cwcupswrapper-1.0.1-1.i386.deb