I was getting CUPSD errors when trying to use my Laser Brother HL 2040 printer. But, you can install Brother HL-2040 by going to the brother website and downloading the linux drivers located here:
http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/download_prn.html#HL-2040
I just installed the lpd driver using the command as follows:
$ sudo dpkg -i brhl2070nlpr-2.0.1-1.i386.deb
When printing now, just select local lpd and then select brother-HL2070 printer from the list (the drivers for both versions are same).

To avoid saving the truecrypt password in history files and mounting the Truecrypt partitions on bash the following trick helps:

history -d $((HISTCMD-1)) && sudo truecrypt --mount <PATH_TO_TRUECRYPT_VOL> --non-interactive -p <PASSWORD>

This will avoid saving the password in the .bash_history file and also mount the truecrypt volume from the command line.  Of course, if you use this in a shell script then the shell script will have the password in it, so you must not do that.

This has been a weird one, finding version information on the operating systems.
On Ubuntu, the following gets the version information
  cat /etc/issue
  cat /etc/lsb-release

On Linux, finding the kernel version
  uname -a
  cat /proc/version

On Windows, from Start-> Run -> cmd.exe
  winver
OR
  systeminfo

This is very simple but still there are a few times when memory fails and we’re not able to do the obvious.

To see the information about the hardware mapping :
  lshal

Finding your CPU Information
  cat /proc/cpuinfo

Finding memory information
  cat /proc/meminfo

Maximum number of SYN requests that the host will remember which did not receive an ACK from clients:
  cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_max_syn_backlog

Finding data bus-size or bit-size i.e., whether my CPU is 32-bit or 64-bit:
  sudo lshw -C cpu | grep width

I’ve been waiting for a good writeable NTFS file system. I used Captive-NTFS but wasn’t really happy with it. Lots of errors when I used it last in July – August 2006 (if I remember the timeline correctly). Now we have a great writeable NTFS file system for Linux called NTFS-3g.

On my Kubuntu machine, I installed it as:
sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g
I also installed ntfsprogs available from http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/ntfsprogs for my Kubuntu machine. The use for the NTFS-Progs is that you can use utils like ntfs fix if your mounted NTFS is tainted. If you do not have a latest version installed of ntfs-progs you might run into issues where ntfsfix might not work. Use the latest version from the above link. You might need to install libntfs9 from the debian package as
dpkg -i libntfs9_1.13.1-6+b2_i386.deb
Now I was getting tired of having to unount my NTFS partitions first and then re-mount them in ntfs-3g mode to make them writeable. So I installed ntfs-config and also the patched pmount debian package. Then all you have to do is run ntfs-config and choose the option that suits you best.
Now all my USB drives that have NTFS on it mount in read/write mode!

I have a Dell Inspiron 700m. I have Kubuntu Breezy Badger 5.10 on this box.
This is how I got the WiFi going on this beauty.
1. Boot up into windows and get the Intel Driver from Intels 1st site OR Intels 2nd site

2. Save the files into a location on the drive which is accessible through linux.

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root@trance:/home/trance# ls -al /media/hda1/intel/wireless_9.0.4_generic_109116/Drivers/
total 8680
dr-x—— 1 root root 4096 2006-05-14 05:42 .
dr-x—— 1 root root 4096 2006-05-14 05:42 ..
-r——– 1 root root 188416 2005-12-27 23:53 SetupWLD.EXE
-r——– 1 root root 4849 2005-01-25 15:17 SetupWLD.ini
-r——– 1 root root 13 2006-02-02 12:38 verfile.tic
-r——– 1 root root 1671168 2006-01-27 08:50 W29MLRES.DLL
-r——– 1 root root 2956544 2006-01-17 21:34 w29n50.sys
-r——– 1 root root 14821 2006-02-02 00:47 w29n51.cat
-r——– 1 root root 119785 2006-01-18 15:47 w29n51.INF
-r——– 1 root root 3325312 2006-01-17 21:32 w29n51.sys
-r——– 1 root root 466944 2006-01-27 08:49 W29NCPA.DLL
-r——– 1 root root 122880 2005-12-27 23:53 WLDMLRES.DLL
root@trance:/home/trance#

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3. Go back into Kubuntu and get the ndiwrapper-utils, ndisgtk, ndiswrapper-source using

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root@trance:/home/trance# sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper ndisgtk ndiswrapper-source

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4. As root ndiswrapper -i will use the windows inf file to install the wireless driver. ndiswrapper -l lists the driver installed.
example:

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root@trance:/home/trance# ndiswrapper -i /media/hda1/intel/wireless_9.0.4_generic_109116/Drivers/w29n51.INF
root@trance:/home/trance# ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
w29n51 driver present, hardware present
root@trance:/home/trance#

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5. modprobe ndiswrapper checks if the ndiswrapper kernel module is installed. An installed module will result in no error. Then write the config file such that you do not need to go through the earlier steps every time you restart the system.

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root@trance:/home/trance# modprobe ndiswrapper
root@trance:/home/trance# ndiswrapper -m
Adding “alias wlan0 ndiswrapper” to /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper

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6. If some error occurs check the output of lsmod

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root@trance:/home/trance# lsmod | grep ndiswrapper

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7. Now that your ndiswrapper is installed and configured. We now need to start up the wireless interface. On my box the wireless interface used to show up as eth0, however, it was not configured to use the ndiswrapper so I would get ‘segmentation fault’ on doing ifup eth0.
However, with the drivers set, I checked if all was well.

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root@trance:/home/trance# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth1 no wireless extensions.

eth0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:”MySSID”
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:13:46:46:78:28
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XX Security mode:open
Power Management:off
Link Quality=97/100 Signal level=-27 dBm Noise level=-89 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

sit0 no wireless extensions.
root@trance:/home/trance# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:13:CE:D9:0D:74
inet6 addr: fe80::213:ceff:fed9:d74/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:48 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:236683 (231.1 KiB) TX bytes:1104 (1.0 KiB)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0x8000 Memory:e0206000-e0206fff

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:12:3F:6B:36:2F
inet addr:192.168.0.109 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::212:3fff:fe6b:362f/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:3050 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1534 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:3117901 (2.9 MiB) TX bytes:159050 (155.3 KiB)
Interrupt:10

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:33 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:33 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:2058 (2.0 KiB) TX bytes:2058 (2.0 KiB)

root@trance:/home/trance# ifup eth0
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.eth0.pid with pid 0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.2
Copyright 2004 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP

sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
Listening on LPF/eth0/00:13:ce:d9:0d:74
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:13:ce:d9:0d:74
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3
ip length 328 disagrees with bytes received 332.
accepting packet with data after udp payload.
DHCPOFFER from 192.168.0.1
DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
ip length 328 disagrees with bytes received 332.
accepting packet with data after udp payload.
DHCPACK from 192.168.0.1
bound to 192.168.0.101 — renewal in 241302 seconds.
root@trance:/home/trance# ifdown eth1
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.eth1.pid with pid 6390
killed old client process, removed PID file
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.2
Copyright 2004 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP

sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
Listening on LPF/eth1/00:12:3f:6b:36:2f
Sending on LPF/eth1/00:12:3f:6b:36:2f
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPRELEASE on eth1 to 192.168.0.1 port 67
root@trance:/home/trance# ping www.google.com
PING www.l.google.com (64.233.161.99) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 64.233.161.99: icmp_seq=1 ttl=233 time=73.5 ms
64 bytes from 64.233.161.99: icmp_seq=2 ttl=233 time=51.6 ms

— www.l.google.com ping statistics —
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 1001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 51.688/62.634/73.580/10.946 ms

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8. To make sure that you don’t have to type iwconfig essid key every time you log on. Change you /etc/network/interfaces file to have these few lines at the end of the file. wireless essid is your wireless network name (SSID) and the key is the WEP key.

iface eth0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid XXXXXXX
wireless-key XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

My /etc/network/interfaces of Ubuntu (in FC/RHL this is the counterpart of the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethX)
looks like:

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# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces.
# They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem.
mapping hotplug
script grep
map eth1

# The primary network interface
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp

auto eth0
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid USC-Trojans
wireless-key # This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces.
# They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem.
mapping hotplug
script grep
map eth1

# The primary network interface
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp

auto eth0
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid USC-Trojans
wireless-key 11111111111111111111111111

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