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do you really need to boot the machine with a livecd? by intel/realtek wireless, buy HP/Epson printers/scanners, by just about any nvidia/intel/amd videocard you want(GMA500 is to be avoided). Other than that, i'm not aware of a lot of main stream hardware that doesn't work. Have any examples that i didn't already cover?

Printer/scanner compatibility can be found at http://www.linuxprinting.org/
AMD compatability can be found at https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/catalyst_107_linux.pdf
nvidia compatibility found at http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-display-amd64-256.44-driver.html
Intel graphics compatibility found at http://intellinuxgraphics.org/documentation.html
NDISWrapper compatibility found at http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ndiswrapper/index.php?title=Main_Page

Oh, and to answer your printer question:

http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Epson-Stylus_CX5400
http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Epson-Stylus_Photo_R1800
http://www.openprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make=KONICA+MINOLTA

Epson and Minolta only support Windows and Mac OSX.

Bullshit:

http://www.linux.com/feature/113738

"The Epson America website directs you to Epson Kowa for Linux drivers for their printers, including one for the CX5400. You can download their GPLd binaries and source code from here."

Oh, and to answer your printer question:

http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Epson-Stylus_CX5400
http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Epson-Stylus_Photo_R1800
http://www.openprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make=KONICA+MINOLTA

Epson and Minolta only support Windows and Mac OSX.

Bullshit:

http://www.linux.com/feature/113738

"The Epson America website directs you to Epson Kowa for Linux drivers for their printers, including one for the CX5400. You can download their GPLd binaries and source code from here."

And this comment is exactly why linux is still overshadowed by windows OS. Why is it perfectly acceptable for me to go to a store, buy a printer that does what I want, and have it not work for up to a year? I shouldn't have to research which devices that put ink on paper work with my OS- it should just freaking work.

Solution. It's been there for years.

This method doesn't always work, because some printers are so spectacularly bad that not even the raw data is enough to make it print -- you also have to send the raw data down the wire according to strict timing requirements.

Having said that, the Epson R1800 should mostly work in Linux; if all you can print is text, then you're doing something wrong.

Say what? I have always had very good experience with HP printers. HP has had excellent support for Linux a very long time. You must be either very new to Linux or trolling. If you are new to the game see the links below.

http://hplip.sourceforge.net/
http://www.linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make=HP

Hmm.

Getting DVD and audio to work? My media player asked if I wanted it to work, and behold, after I ticked and clicked, it did.

Printer? A little research on http://linuxprinting.org/ another tick'n'click, and a setup wizard, and I was printing too.

Perhaps Tony Stark sponsors Ubuntu?

(oh, and any corporation mad enough to allow it's users to watch movies at work has more productivity worries than whether they have the right codecs installed or not).

I just checked, his printer is in the mostly category, so it'll work fine for normal printing.

The fact is I find that most printers that aren't "bottom of the range" or "multifunction" work fine with Linux though some, like this one, have annoying setup issues. Of the problem printer classes it's almost purely a case of documentation; if the maker doesn't keep their technical documentation a "death first" secret drivers appear VERY quickly.

No equivolent of pricegrabber in your country?

I don't know about his country. In my country, what you'll learn from this kind of tools (once you click an entry and go read the details) is that the only way to pay less than 700$ is: to buy an "upgrade" version (thus it requires having paid the "wad of cash" the previous time) and the reduction isn't big ($700 > $500).
OEM version still cost more than alternative OSes ($700 > $250).

That's in addition of what you'll have to pay Microsoft Office (and maybe a couple of other software like Visual Studio, Paintshop, etc.)

All this for functionality that Linux gives you free (and often dressed in a nice user friendly GUI that hides away all the low level cmd-line, at least with Ubuntu and OpenSUSE)

You're lucky then. Printers are notorious for not working on Linux; wlan is hit or miss.

WTF ? Most of the laser printers will understand Postscript any way.
The most popular brand in the shops around here (HP, Epson, Brother) have almost all of their printers supported out of the box.
For the rest, there are nice website like Linux Printing to help you pick a working printer.

Usually the few more problematic printers are those from less known asian brands. In most case, these printers are also problematic in windows, because of crap-quality drivers and/or because it stops functioning once you upgrade Windows because the parent company either doesn't provide more recent drivers or went out of business by the time.

Again I have to disagree. Gimp doesn't replace PS, OOo doesn't replace Office, etc. If by "high quality software build environment" you mean a command line compiler and vi, then yes. Does it come with anything else though? Netbeans? Eclipse? Last time i used linux, the answer was no, and I can get those some tools on windows as well.

They are not exactly equivalent. But GIMP and OpenOffice.org provide enough functionality so most of users can get rid of the corresponding commercial application.
As for programming Linux has the widest set of tools, starting from cmd-line+editor driven one like emacs or vi (and once you get hang of them they can really be powerful, specially given the kitchen-sink-scriptability of emacs) up to very nice graphical environment like eclipse (a lot of people are able to pull serious work out of it) kdevelop (Default on most KDE-based installation. I'm playing around with it and liking it, provides everything I need) anjuta, etc.
or even curiosity like SetEdit (for the nostalgic of the Borland's early "Turbo" era).
Just think for a second : If Visual Studio was this state-of-the-art "nothing is as good as this" environment ? Why doesn't it happen that most developer cross compile their linux creations from VMware image with Windows+Visual ? Whereas it happens that some of the Linux developer that make multiplatform software do cross-compile to Windows using their usual tools and Cygnus or MingW ? There's a big programming culture around Linux, and they have built tools that have evolved with them. Some are more cryptic like Emacs, other much more easy to start working in.

Linux gives you access to thousands of libraries all providing a lot of useful technologies. Keep in mind that any component, even the smallest, that you see on your linux installation, comes with it's source code, and you could play around with it - provided the necessary coding skill, like the PDF rendering ability ? Poppler is included with it's -devels. Want to put some SVG ? Access Videos ? Whatever else ? The libs are here at your finger tips.
Making a SVG-to-PDF converter is nothing more complicated than gluing together a couple of components (SVG, Cai

#1
Old January 18th, 2007
tweedledee tweedledee is online now
Way Too Much Ubuntu

Join Date: Dec 2006
Beans: 252
Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn User
HOWTO Install Samsung Unified Printer Driver
I had a fair amount of trouble initially getting my Samsung printer installed completely, but I finally have it all done, so here's a mini-guide for those who might benefit.

NOTE: for the last few months, the Samsung website has been utilizing some buggy Flash code that will crash many (all?) Linux browsers that have Flash installed - hopefully they will fix this soon, but they don't seem in any hurry. Either use a secondary browser that does not have the Flash plugin installed (e.g., if you mainly use Firefox, you could use Epiphany (Gnome) or Konqueror (KDE)) or download the drivers via another computer/OS. Alternatively, again if you use Firefox, you can install the "flashblock" extension, usually this prevents the crash (and is useful for many of the other websites that have been appearing recently causing the same behavior, although it's not 100% successful).

EDIT: The newest (as of this writing) driver from Samsung (20070324...) appears to solve some of the mfp/xsane issues, but also appears to missing a couple of library files. See post #23 for details. Also see posts #27-29 for details on ...plc errors and solutions.
Post #35 suggets the 200704.... drivers have resolved this issue, so this may now be irrelevant.

First, a disclaimer: much of the information I used came from this thread: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=28774 7. Another good source of information is http://www.linuxprinting.org./ Finally, I did this using the 20060719... and 20070125.... drivers; newer (or older) drivers may require some tweaks. Also, especially if you have a monochrome, non-duplexing, non-multifunction printer, you very well may have success with a generic post-script printer as a driver, without having to install the Samsung drivers. Also note that for my printer, pretty much all functions except duplex control worked even if I skipped steps 2-4 below (i.e., don't install the driver, only the relevant .ppd file) - which also has the advantage of not needing to fix xsane (additional step 2).

This works for my CLP-550; similar steps seem to work for other Samsung printers not supported out-of-the-box with the drivers available in a fresh Ubuntu install. This is NOT a multi-function, multi-functions may require additional steps (but are discussed in other threads, a quick search should bring them up). Posts below from other users have reported sucess (sometimes with a couple of small modifications) with: ML-2510 (# 5, 14, 16, 26), ML-2510/XEU (# 18 ), ML-2571n (# 12), SCX-4200 (# 10), SCX-4521F (# 11), CLP-300 (# 35).

1. Download and untar the driver from Samsung's website; for this example I will assume you untar it to ~.
2. Open a terminal and navigate to ~/cdroot/Linux. I had to "chmod +w install.sh" to give write permissions, but that may be unusual. Edit install.sh as follows:
a: change the first line from "#! /bin/sh" to "#! /bin/bash" (without the quotes)
b (possibly not needed): change the line that includes "guiinstall.bin" (search for it, it's around line 1277) to eliminate the ".bin" (i.e

But do they have good Linux support? I'm happy about not dual booting anymore and I'd like to keep it that way :)

http://www.linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make =Kodak ...didn't give much of a choice.

Actually, I must apologize, it's a C5200n. I misspoke.

Aside from that you must admit that if you goto Linux Printing's Okidata list there are a fair number of OD printers with no Linux support.

And yes, I googled and had done other research with no luck.

Did you try Google? http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recn um=Okidata-C5300

It's a postscript printer, you shouldn't need drivers. You do need a custom PPD file, though: http://europe.oki.com/fcgi-bin/public.fcgi?pid=6&c id=135&chid=10&pdflag=&prid=407&OSId=5&languageId= 1

Both of those came from the printer's page on linux-printing.

Distributors should try really hard to build an online, wiki-style database of ALL the hardware that a given version of their distribution supports. This should not just be by "chipset" (Atheros, ACX100), but rather, should be by actual box packaged versions of the hardware (D-Link so and so version 2, Linksys so and so versions 3-5, Logitech QuickCam Pro, etc. . .).

While they don't list which distributions support particular hardware, or how to enable the hardware in those distributions that do, sites like the Free Software Foundation's Hardware Devices that Support GNU/Linux and LinuxPrinting.org are pretty good. The FSF one in particular lists not only the chipset, but what manufacturers use it and the names their products are sold under.

Don't attack the analogy, attack the argument I present with the analogy.

So the guy builds the wall and realises that wasting rocks is not progress. Imagine that there was this new wall technology, using the same rocks, but building it faster and more effectively. He would also have the option to upgrade his wall so that in the future, people could use his wall by adding things to it, that they otherwise would not have been able to do. If he ignored the new wall technology, and built his wall the "old-fashioned" way, in the future he would regret his decision because it won't allow for any "new additions".

Even in later versions of Windows it is capable of cutting out the crap you don't need, while still allowing you to put it back if you need to. Look on mininova or piratebay for Barely Naked Windows XP. I'm running that through Qemu completely in user-space on my trusty Thinkpad T23 and it boots in 40 seconds (and about 25 seconds with the kernel module). The ISO is about 250MB and the install easily fits on a 2GB partition with plenty to spare.

Progress and motion are two different things, but obviously so are Windows 95 and Windows XP. If every release of Windows is motion, that would contradict the existence of obvious difference between Windows 95 and Windows XP, so they can't be just motion (and I'm not talking about the interface, I'm talking about the backbone), there must be progress too.

Printing in Linux works fine for me. Just the other day at work I set up a kerberos authenticated samba printer, the Ricoh 3260 (big machine that staples etc). All the features were there, duplexing, colour options, n-up, stapling, finishing, input/output trays. http://www.linuxprinting.org/ is an excellent place to start. My home printer has also been set up correctly, a Kyocera FS-1000. It's not hard at all, it's just different to Windows. Once CUPS is installed, going to http://localhost:631/ provides a rather nice interface for managing printers/jobs/classes. Took about 2 minutes per printer.

I'm not sure if it's too out of date at this point, but I've also had excellent results with hpijs for some of the older printers whose extra features may not be handled by the built-in MacOS X drivers.

http://www.linuxprinting.org/macosx/hpijs/

My HP printer works fine, thanks to hplip (which, incidentally, is also a Debian package).

I know you didn't specify the operating system, but given that this is Slashdot, people might want to know if their next printer will work under their OS of choice. A list of printers that work (and don't work) under Linux (and in most cases just about anywhere Ghostscript will run) can be had at http://www.linuxprinting.org/.

The Mac should be able to find printers shared with SMB. Otherwise take a look at sharing the printer as LPR on your PC, and then using the "Printer Setup Utility" to access it.

A quick look seems to indicate that this is a GDI based printer, and therefore does not support Postscript. For this reason I took a look for "CUP" & "GDI" and came up with this:

http://www.linuxprinting.org/macosx/samsung-gdi/

Another possibility, lookimg for "ML-1710" and "OS X", was this:

http://printers.free-driver-download.com/Samsung/1 4085/Samsung-ML-1710-Printer-Driver-Mac-OS-X-10.3. html
http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php3

Let me know if you get it working.

Canon ImageRunner Printers? Just use a postscript driver. Any printer that has postscript, just use a postscript driver. take a look up at http://www.linuxprinting.org/ for more information.

Great idea and allow take a moment to plug Linuxprinting.org as a fantastic resource that has helped me immeasurably. I used to disagree, but rare legacy hardware be damned! I'm in favour of things like ISA Sound Blaster cards and 10 Mbit NICs remaining supported if they were popular and have existing stable drivers and knowledge base, but support for hardware should be dropped if maintainers cannot be found.

Documentation? About all I did was check linuxprinting.org for printers known to work, then went out and found one. All the foomatic, cups, hplip, etc packages were installed, and just went through the default steps for adding a printer through http://localhost:631/ (the default cups admin interface). I've no idea where to put freshly-downloaded PPDs to make them available to CUPS, however. For printers not listed on linuxprinting (I get the impression that it's not as up-to-date as it could be), their forum archives might have additional info...

Epson Stylus Photo R800

Above two known to be good. The driver for the Epson Stylus Photo R1800 listed by linuxprinting.org appears to have a few issues, but works adequately. I expect I could find a better driver if I had a reason to.

Epson Stylus Photo R800

Above two known to be good. The driver for the Epson Stylus Photo R1800 listed by linuxprinting.org appears to have a few issues, but works adequately. I expect I could find a better driver if I had a reason to.

You can go to http://www.linuxprinting.org/. They have all the information you need. You can check how well a particular printer works with linux there. AFAIK, the drivers are supplied as part of the foomatic package and then you have a bunch spoolers available. CUPS has been the most convenient for me.

The most important specification for /. readers:

Is it supported on Linux? :)

You can check at linuxprinting.org

...Or the ability to download Linux drivers for HP's printers, and other equipment from HP's website. I know there is http://linuxprinting.org/ for printers but I would like it from the horse's mouth - i.e. from http://www.hp.com/

Is that too much to ask from a major computer vendor that claims to support Linux? I do not think so.

Going completely OT here...
Most Epson printers do well with Linux. I bought a cheap Epson Stylus C46 which works just great with CUPS and the Gutenprint drivers. Check out http://linuxprinting.org/ - they have loads of good info and docs.

To setup my PSC 1210 i used http://linuxprinting.org/ , hope it helps you :)

Try searching Google; the first result has all the info you need.

The best for linux are usually Epson or HP, which is ok because those are usually the best for Windows, too.

HP has GPL'd deamons to work with their printers and Epson generally supports Linux, too thru releasing PPD files and documentation and such.

Lexmark, Canon, and Brothers are usually worse then trash.

See
http://www.linuxprinting.org/suggested.html

Also check out specific models before you purchase them.. there are a odd few epson or HP printers that may not work or have full features for Linux.

Yeah but forget about Canon if you want to use Linux. As I've been told on the phone, their official stance is that they don't, and will not, support Linux in any way, shape, or form - no official drivers, no disclosure of how anything works, etc.

I've got a Canon PIXMA iP3000. Nice printer, nice functions, fucked support for Linux.

I can use Canon BJC-7004 drivers, or I can pay about AU$50 (nearly half the cost of the printer) to Turboprint.de for a driver they've cobbled together (amongst others) after they signed some sort of draconian NDA with Canon.

Using Windows? Nice printer. Using Mac OS X? Drivers are downloadable but I didn't see all the extra software that is available from Canon for Windows. Using Linux? Get a HP or Epson.

Caveat Emptor, as they say.

http://www.linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make =Canon
http://www.linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make =Brother

http://www.linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make =Canon
http://www.linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make =Brother

So why didn't you buy her (or have her buy) a Linux friendly printer? It's not like it's the Kernal Dev's or the Distro Dev's fault that the
proprietary printer bastards won't provide decent Linux drivers. And it's not like it's hard to find a good list of Linux friendly printers,

funny enough: http://www.linuxprinting.org/

has a nice list and that took me only a minute to google. Keep in mind your easy to buy Wal-mart specials are going to be HP or
Lexmark inkjets that have no Linux support, funny how that works.

- Brad

My girlfriend has a Lexmark that had no Mac drivers, I was able to install and use drivers from Linux on it from Linuxprinting.org

this is the driver that I used. It took a while to set up, but not any longer then getting an IP printer to work on windows 98.

I think I had to install foomatic or somethign to get it worksing, but it did work.

So I always assumed the drivers were interchangable (but a pain in the ass to do so).

...this story appears immediately I just spent an hour wrestling with CUPS and a bloody "Unsupported Personality: PCL" error.

For those that are interested, use this driver for the HP LaserJet 1012 if you don't want to have to power-cycle the printer every 5 or ten pages.

Oh wait, you didn't know that those were all computers? Sorry, I guess I have been working in embedded systems for too long....

Then I'm sure that you understand the difference between a general-purpose personal computer and an embedded systems, neh? One of them being that end users tend not to install other software on an embedded system. Or demand a theme-able skinnable GUI. Or run your software on incompatible hardware platforms. Speaking of which...

For example, why do the printer drivers for my Laserjet IID stink so bad under Linux?

Ask HP. Perhaps if you want to run Linux you should buy a printer that works more than "Mostly" with Linux? (I recommed Samsung's ML-1430, it's worked great for me.)

It gaming systems are so easy to use, why is the 'desktop' so stinking hard?

Because the things you do in games are fewer and less complex than things you do on the desktop, as are the things you do them to and with.

Game designed get to contrain actions, subjects, and objects, but computer users want to create their own objects (files), and install their own software (creating new actions and subjects).

I use Slackware 3.2 which has been upgraded and hacked over the years into something resembling Linux From Scratch, so I found the easiest way to get my Samsung laser (ML-1740) to work was to grab the latest AFPL Ghostscript (8.50), get the Samsung GDI driver for Ghostscript 8.x from http://www.linuxprinting.org/ and copy/merge the required files, compile Ghostscript, then install LPRng and Foomatic to get all the nifty features like toner save mode working. Yes, it's that easy.

Does anyone to have a nice resource site which is Linux-friendly and contains reviews about printer quality as well?

Besides linuxprinting.org? None that I know of.

Color laser printer, max. 1200x1200 dpi, this is a Paperweight

Doh!

There's a bunch of info on the CLP-500 here that might help. There are lots and lots of comments from users with both good and bad results and the distros they used.

Check this out:

http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recn um=Samsung-CLP-500

Good Luck!

I can't help you with your question, I have no experience with reverse engineering.

But for others who don't want to have the same problem: you should have checked www.linuxprinting.org, which says of the Samsung CLP-500:

Samsung supports this printer with proprietary drivers which come with the printer on its driver CD or can be downloaded on the web sites of Samsung. Unfortunately, these drivers do not work necessarily with all Linux distributions and there are no free drivers available. As it is also not sure whether Samsung will update their drivers for future Linux versions, this printer cannot be recommended.

I would try to get the proprietary driver to work, basically by getting the distro it was made for, or at least finding out why it works there but not on your distro - probably it needs some specific kernel image that it was compiled with, which would suck...

That said, I'm leaning away from all inkjet printing. It's expensive, so it's only good for low volume printing, but when used infrequently the cartridge heads dry out and clog. Pressing them against a folded paper towel soaked in hot water unclogs them easily enough, but it's a bit of a pain. If I really needed color printing on my desktop, I'd pay the extra money and get a color laser printer on eBay.

For the amount of color printing I anticipate, Office Max now offers $.45 per page color prints, and they're not inkjet, so the colors don't fade. Office Depot is more expensive. Both can print from a CD with PDF, etc.

For monochrome printing, it's hard to beat a used Lexmark network printer on eBay. I paid under $200 including shipping for a huge Optra T614. It's built for daily use in a departmental workgroup, so it'll last forever. 25 ppm, duplexer for printing on both sides, 25K pages per toner refill, and Xandros immediately recognized it and had the driver for it as well. All Lexmark laser printers except a few on the low end are Postscript printers, so Linux loves them.

Yeah, Lexmark was one of the first to try to apply the DMCA to toner cartridges (the anti-refill chips), but they still aren't as evil as HP which has definitely lost customer focus and quality during the reign of Carly.

But - since HP's pricing has gone worse over time anyway, I think it's time to ditch them for good and no longer buy their products... (and just hope that this whole thing doesn't catch on in the printer industry).

Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. Take a look at the list of Suggested Printers for Free Software Users and try to find a printer that is well supported on BSD, Linux and friends. The list is a bit outdated, but in general it's a good guideline. I researched this in detail a few months ago when I was shopping for a new printer and in the end, as much as I hate HP, I decided that an HP PSC series printer would be the most suitable and economic choice for my needs.

Epson is even worse than HP in many ways as most modern Epson printers seem to be the disposable type which gets clogged up within 6 months in such a way that buying a new printer is cheaper than replacing the head.

Canon printers seem nice in terms of quality, but there are no realiable high quality drivers for BSD or Linux. The same can be said for all the other major manufacturers. Ink cost is also an issue and with HP you can at least resort to refilling the cartridges yourself, which reduces the cost about 4 to 5 times.

Before you buy a canon check http://www.linuxprinting.org/ and see if you can use your shiny new printer on your linux machine...

D.

• Epson=paperweight
• Canon=nothing known
• HP=works mostly

• Epson=paperweight
• Canon=nothing known
• HP=works mostly

Epson is usually a good bet.

http://www.linuxprinting.org/