The instructions for ubuntu were a good starting point. I’ll summarize:

1. Download these drivers for the FX DocuPrint C525A.
2. Unzip and use alien to convert the package to a .deb, and install it.
   benv@error:/tmp$ unzip dpc525a_linux_.0.0.tar.zip; alien Fuji_Xerox-DocuPrint_C525_A_AP-1.0-1.i386.rpm; dpkg -i fuji-xerox-docuprint-c525-a-ap_1.0-2_i386.deb
3. Go to http://localhost:631/admin and add a new network printer.
4. Select a protocol (either Jetdirect or LPD) and enter the IP address of the printer
5. Select the PPD file you installed from the .deb archive (/usr/share/cups/model/FujiXerox/en/FX_DocuPrint_C525_A_AP.ppd) or select the driver through the menu system
6. In cups go set the default printer options and make sure to set the optional tray module to 250 Sheet Feeder.

Issues I ran into

That’s all pretty default as the linked installation guide says. However, in my first attempt I used the JetDirect protocol on port 9100 (using an IP address, not a hostname). While this worked, everything was dirt slow. Going to the options page of a print dialog took almost a minute!
After some messing around I decided to try other protocols. The other protocol that worked was LPD/LPR. But not only did it work, but it’s fast! Click *BAF* Bluescreen1!!… uhh, I mean, print dialog
Anyway, instead of using an URI like socket://192.168.1.123:9100 simply use lpd://192.168.1.123:515. Let me repeat this so that people who skip over this post also read it: Use lpd://192.168.1.123:515 instead of socket://blabla, this works a lot faster!.

Once I got the printer in CUPS I also ran into the issue that the printer would respond but give an error on the printer itself. This was because I forgot to properly select the Tray Module, make sure it’s set to the 250 Feeder like in this picture:

Xerox 6125N tray module selection

Another issue, cups doesn’t seem to give all options for this printer in their default options dialog. This is bad, because you need to change the default paper source. Default it’s set to the bypass tray, which means you have to manually insert the paper when printing. Very annoying. However, using other tools give you more options. Using system-config-printer for instance gives the chance to change it. Make sure you put it to auto or tray 1 like this:

Xerox 6125N Paper source selection

When you finally manage to get those options set, the printer works perfectly under linux.
Have fun printing!

Oh yeah, here’s a slackware package in case you don’t want to mess with aliens and pokemon os
Slackware package for Xerox Phaser 6125N cups driver - Version 1.0 - SHA: 5f8b6478f93a6484d4834990448b152fb10d9cdd

And now, back to my Glenlivet… mmmmmmm

Glenlivet 18 year old

No, that has nothing to do with Apple/Mac computers or Media Access Control, it’s
part of the SSH protocol (and others) called Messenge Authentication Code. This blog has a nice explanation: Jan Pechanec on SSH messages.

Funny thing, my brother also had this exact issue with the same kind of laptop. Well…. in his case it was putty failing his connection from a windows machine to this laptop.
The reason? Same as ever, checksum offloading.
You can check if your card does this with the ethtool program:

And the fix for this:

Fixed.

” Wait, what does Pokemon OS have to do with this?”
Well, isn’t that obvious? It’s supposed to magically work, and it doesn’t!
Probably more a kernel thing though… oh well.

Usually I have little problems getting stuff to work on it, but as hardware gets older and support gets worse thing get more interesting.
First things first: I have no issues with ubuntu, they’re doing great work. In fact, the machine worked fine after installation, except for I can’t live with 800×600, so I wanted a better video driver.
Needless to say that means NON OPEN SOURCE GARBAGE FROM NVIDIA (ATI is just as bad btw). Although their binary driver usually ‘works’, you’re royally screwed if your system doesn’t meet their requirements.

So after installing ubuntu karmic, and more specific: kunbuntu karmic, everything kinda worked. In the system tray was a “hardware” icon indicating that there might be better but proprietory drivers for my hardware. *clickety*. “Yes sure, you can have my children and life and eternal soul and whatever the hell you believe making me check this checkbox will accomplish” (idiots).
Maybe I should start using wget with something like

…. probably has about the same value as those checkboxes.
Anyway, after the checkboxes the karmic koala downloaded some stuff and then barfed up some errors, none of them were helpful.

Digging a bit deeper it appeared that the dkms system wasn’t able to compile a kernel module. Oooh, why didn’t you say so… nvidia cruft scores again!
More specific:

Well, that’s a very cute error. Better buy intel next time… or maybe ATI when they finally get their act together with their open source drivers…

The failing piece of cardboard in this case was an Nvidia Geforce 2 MX, or as lspci said it:

“Yeah that’s lovely, but how did you get it running?”
Simple, attach legs to it and kick it!

But seriously, there are some options, like this patch I ran into.
Don’t bother trying out the newer nvidia drivers, like the 185 series, they won’t work with a message like this:

So the simple solution now is to use the latest driver from the nvidia site:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_96.43.13.html

“So what’s the big deal?”
First of all, were these drivers open they would have been included by default. You can blame ubuntu for being slow or not testing all possible driver combinations, but it’s a problem on both sides.
Second, now that I have to manually install this driver, there will be guaranteed issues whenever ubuntu has a new kernel, which means more support jobs for me. (which is something I don’t like for computers that are from relatives or customers)
Third, with the drivers not being open it’s impossible to debug the bugs that are in them. Check the nvidia forums (nvnews) if you want to amuse yourself on some rants of tired customers from this department.

Oh well, at least it works for now…. more than I can say for my ancient ATI mobile M9700 chip in my old laptop… (well, it works but don’t ask how).

Update – the story continues
Obviously this was not the last pokemon OS issue I had today. After the whole nvidia cardboard disaster, lotjuh wanted to configure some garbage on the PC, including openoffice.org.
Shortly after she touched the machine she informed me about the broken state of openoffice.org:

Lotjuh: Whenever I go to options it crashes!
BenV: Did you start it from a console?
Lotjuh: *retry* … *some error pops up*

The error looked a bit like this:

Since it was a new installation it couldn’t be the profile…. some googlefo gave me almost nothing, so another good reason to add this to this post.
The most useful post I could find hinted that removing ‘openoffice.org-gtk‘ might help but leave an “ugly” openoffice. Well, indeed, after removing it not only the options page worked, it was also even more ugly. Who would have imagined that was even possible!
However, lotjuh wasn’t too thrilled about the new look. Obviously my “why use openoffice anyway” argument doesn’t fly with morons that can barely handle MSWord (“What does Save do?”), so time to look into that.

Checking apt-cache against openoffice (why doesn’t apt-cache sort by default?) gave some insight…. somehow the state of the system was that openoffice.org-base was not installed.
Mighty interesting… I’m quite sure I didn’t remove that when removing openoffice.org-gtk… besides, how would it start otherwise?
Ignoring this mystery for now I installed openoffice.org-base and some junk that tagged along with it.
While I was at it I also installed the openclipart-openoffice.org and openoffice.org-style-galaxy, my guess is that one of those fixed the problem.
Yes, after that round of apt-get install it worked. Magic.