On 06/16/2012 07:24 AM, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> It really sounds like you want a better fax *client*. Hop over to the HylaFAX mailing list for help with that. And if you think replacing it with CUPS would make it better...
>
> Look up Eric Raymond's essay, "The Luxury of Ignorance".
>

It is not merely the client.  Comparing the ease of use of EL -- one of 
the few truly stable instances of a Linux environment -- on a field 
laptop versus MS Win (neither 8 nor vista, but XP Pro, 7 Pro) or Mac OS 
X -- for end user applications, and EL does not come out very well. 
Ubuntu does somewhat better, but is not EL in many other ways.  Consider 
Network Manager (NM) as an enduser application.  NM has been roundly 
criticised as a server configuration tool and even for a tethered static 
network configuration workstation, and rightly so.  However, for a field 
workstation that must connect to a large variety of IEEE 802.11 and 
802.3 configurations (and presumably 802.16 if that service becomes 
ubiquitous), mostly engineered in hotel rooms and conference centers to 
work with services configured for MS Win and Mac OS X clients, NM as 
currently released on SL 6x does a fine job for an end user (at least in 
IA-32 mode -- I have not tested X86-64 NM).

However, for those using a laptop as a field FAX machine either over a 
POTS modem or attempting to get to an Internet accessible FAX gateway, 
there is no end user end-to-end "automagic" solution equivalent to NM 
that I have found.  There are POTS modem configuration issues, getting 
the FAX application to recognize and use the modem driver, and a host of 
other problems -- at least the last time I attempted to use a Linux FAX 
interface.  Presumably, from this thread, these issues persist.

Yasha Karant