• Fewer auth dialogs for Print Settings

    The latest version of system-config-printer adds a new button to the main screen: Unlock. This is a GtkLockButton attached to the “all-edit” polkit permission for cups-pk-helper. The idea is to make it work a bit more like the Printing screen in the GNOME Settings application. To make any changes you need to click Unlock first,…

  • Network printing

    It’s nearly two years since I wrote about session printing, in which the user doesn’t need to modify a locally running CUPS instance in order to print to a network printer. The main advantage of having printing running entirely in the user session is that no special privileges are needed. After all, all you need…

  • Dual Band routers vs mDNS

    Wanted to write this up in case someone else is scratching their head with the same issue. Some routers are able to use both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies, allowing devices to appear as though they are on the same network regardless of which they use. These actually provide two different wireless networks, with…

  • Printing to Google Cloud Print from GTK+

    I’ve been working on a Google Cloud Print GTK+ print module. Google Cloud Print is a web service provided by Google that allows people to share their printers. In addition to being able to print to printers shared that way, there is a cloud equivalent of “Print to file” in the form of “Save to…

  • Typing breaks in GNOME

    For quite a while now I’ve used the drwright application to configure typing breaks. Once every so often, the desktop would refuse keyboard input and tell me to go and walk around for a few minutes instead. This helps to prevent RSI and other problems. Since Fedora 19, though, drwright is no longer usable. No…