HP Linux Imaging and Printer (HPLIP) driver for Linux systems, including Ubuntu has just been updated to version 3.13.11 and this brief tutorial is going to show you how to install or upgrade in Ubuntu.

This driver package is maintained by a project sponsored by HP to make most of its printers compatible with Linux machines. There are now over 2300 HP printers with full support for Linux computers.

The driver package comes pre-installed in Ubuntu but if your printer isn't fully supported, you may have to manually upgrade the driver for your printer to fully work. This release brings ever more support for newer HP printers. Below is a list of new printers that will be fully supported after installing the driver package.

• HP Color LaserJet Pro MPF M176 series
• HP Color LaserJet Pro MPF M176n
• HP Color LaserJet Pro MPF M177 series
• HP Color LaserJet Pro MPF M177fw
• HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M750 Printer series
• HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M750n
• HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M750dn
• HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M750xh
• HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M855 Printer series
• HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M855dn Printer
• HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M855xh Printer
• HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M855x+ Printer
• HP Color LaserJet Enterprise flow M880 Multifunction Printer series
• HP Color LaserJet Enterprise flow M880z Multifunction Printer
• HP Color LaserJet Enterprise flow M880z+ Multifunction Printer
• HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127 series
• HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fn
• HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fw
• HP Officejet 2620 All-in-One
• HP Officejet 2621 All-in-One
• HP Officejet 2622 All-in-One

To view the release log of this release, check out its news page.

To install or upgrade the driver package in Ubuntu, press Ctrl – Alt – T on your keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below to download it.

wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/hplip/hplip-3.13.11.run

Next, run the commands below to install it.

sh hplip-3.13.11.run

Follow the wizard to complete the installation.

Here's a step-by-step guide on installing HPLIP in Ubuntu.

After installing the driver package, restart your computer and give your printer a try.

Enjoy!

This post HP Printer Driver For Linux Updated To Version 3.13.11 appeared first on Liberian Geek

A new version of Microsoft Security Essentials has just been released for those using Windows XP with Service Pack 3, Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 or 2 and Windows 7 computers.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free security program that provides real-time protection for your home and work computers. It protects against viruses, spyware and programs that may want to do harm to your PC. If you don't have any virus protection for you computers, Security Essentials is a great program to install.

Before you can install Security Essentials, make sure your computer meets the following requirements. It must be either Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 running at least service pack 3 for Windows XP, service pack 1 or 2 for Vista. It will install for all Windows 7 editions.

It's also recommend that you remove or uninstall all other antivirus programs from your computers. Running more than one antivirus and antispyware software on your computer may have negative impact on the PC performance.

Security Essentials is free and comes with Windows Updates. To upgrade using Windows Update, click Start –> All Programs –> Windows Updates. Then check for update and install.

If you want to manually install it, visit Security Essentials download page.

If you have Windows 8.1, you can't use Security Essentials. Windows 8 and 8.1 come with Windows Defender that provides the same built-in protections for Windows PC.

Windows Defender is already installed in Windows, so you don't have to do anything. Windows will also automatically update it as well as its definition files.

Enjoy!

This post Microsoft Security Essentials Updated For Windows XP / Vista / 7 appeared first on Liberian Geek

What powers your blog? What did you do to make your blog what is it today? Well, here's what goes into this blog (liberiangeek.net). This site may not be the best and fastest when you compare it to many similar sites. In fact I don't consider this site to be any better than the next one considering I only spend less than $90 bucks per month to manage.

If you ask how did we manage to spend less than $90 bucks per month on a site that brings in more than 500,000 visits a month, I will tell you a lot of small but effective tips.

If you want you can try to replicate it and see if it works for you too.

We like what we've done on this site. We've managed to improve the site's speed dramatically from 10 seconds of page load time to under 4 seconds in most areas.

Below are some of the setup we have put together on this site. It may not be the best but it works and we're happy with the site's performance and security.

Hosting

First, we pick the cheapest provider to host the site of all we looked at. This site is powered by 1and1 dedicated server (L4) config with Linux OS. It comes with 4GB RAM, 500GB storage and AMD Quad-core processor for $79.99.

Servers

Then we installed Nginx, PHP, MariaDB, PHP-FPM and other extensions to speed things up. Nginx along PHP, MariaDB and PHP-FPM helps speed up WordPress dramatically. PHP-FPM is used to manage page, CSS, JavaScript caches.

WordPress Plugins

Plugins are good, but installing too many have have negative impact on your site. So what we did was to install the bare minimum to keep the site running efficiently.

First installed W3 Total Cache. This plugin is only used to cache database queries and objects. Page cache CSS, JavaScript and others are handled by Nginx and PHP-FPM.

Akismet and Growmap Anti-spambot plugin handle our spam problem. With these two plugins, we virtually kill all spam on this site.

WordPress SEO handles SEO on this site. This plugin helps the site perform well on Google search result pages. It's a good plugin to have. We installed WP-PageNavi plugin to manage page navigation.

VaultPress automatically backup our site to a remote server so in an event our site gets hacked or crashes, we should be able to restore the site. Contextual Related Posts handles related posts under each post. It's nice plugin and we love it.

Google PageSpeed

We implemented Google's PageSpeed service which is currently in beta. This service is like CDN (content delivery network) that copies your blog content onto Google owned servers which are faster in most cases and deliver that content to users requesting it. Instead of users coming to your web server to get the content, they get it from faster servers owned by Google closer to them.

Our Nginx server is configured to work with Google PageSpeed service.

Dome 9

We use Dome 9 to handle security. It is like a firewall. It blocks all ports on your server except for port 80 for Web and SSH. You can then configure SSH to be on demand which can only be opened when you want to connect to your server. It will then lock the port when you're done. We currently use the free version.

So, there you go. Our setup maybe not be the best, but it cost effective and good. It helps speed the site and provide security. If you have a better setup, please leave a comment below.

Enjoy!

This post Blogging Tips – What Makes Your Blog Better? appeared first on Liberian Geek