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HP Print Server Uses Linux, But Doesn't Support It?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the isnt-it-ironic-doncha-think? dept.

Spyky writes: "A fairly new product from HP, the Jet Direct 4000 Printing Appliance includes a 266 MHz PC processor, a 5.2 GB HD, 64 MB of RAM and runs the Linux operating system. However, it fails to recognize Linux, or any non-Microsoft operating system as a valid client. In essence HP recognizes Linux as an operating system powerful and stable enough to trust their Printing Server Appliance to, yet are unwilling to commit to supporting that very same operating system as a client."

3 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Questions by Jeremy+Allison+-+Sam · · Score: 5

    Q) .What has the open source movement gained?

    ans: nuffin.

    Bzzzzt : WRONG ANSWER - thanks for playing.

    I don't want to talk too much about this as I'm
    sure HP have lots of marketing they want to do
    around this.

    But the deal is that *yes* this box uses Samba.
    *YES* - HP have donated a *lot* of time, effort,
    *CODE* (note that - it's important !) and money
    in helping Samba support the new WinNT print
    subsystem.

    They have also helped us push the development on
    authentigration and user enumeration between Samba
    and WinNT, (check out the winbind project being
    done on the Samba lists).

    All of these goodies will appear in Samba 2.2.x,
    due... well.... when it's *ready* (soon I hope) !

    HP are *massively* contributing to Samba, and
    the Open Source efforts. Just as much as other
    vendors (SGI, Veritas) and other official Samba
    supporters do !

    Don't knock them just because their marketing
    people sometimes are a bit clueless, and only
    mention Windows in a product sheet.

    They don't mention Samba either (I'm going to
    be having a word with them about that.... :-).

    Regards,

    Jeremy Allison,
    Samba Team.

  2. Re:Corporate inconsistancy by Tet · · Score: 5
    This is not that big of a surprise. One division of the company appears to be pro-linux and another division appears to be anti-Linux or Microsoft-exclusive.

    Indeed. I got a perfect example of this when HP technical support refused to tell me how to get the BIOS to recognise the suspend partition on my HP laptop. I said "Does it have to be in a specific location? Does it have to have a particular partition type? Does it have to be formatted in any particular way?". They said "Use the utility we provide under Windows". I pointed out that I didn't run Windows, and thus couldn't run the utility (which I didn't have anyway). They refused to give me the information I needed. I didn't want help on how to do anything, I just needed the info so I could do it myself. But apparently any non-MS usage isn't allowed, and they wouldn't tell me anything. The tech support guy quite happily told me that he ran Red Hat at home, but wasn't allowed to tell me anything because I wasn't running Windows...

    --
    "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
  3. Acronym arithmetic. by slothbait · · Score: 5

    Anyone else just realize that:

    HP++ = IQ

    in the same sense that

    IBM-- = HAL.

    or

    VMS++ = WNT (Windows NT)

    I'm surprised that I haven't seen this pointed out before.

    --Lenny