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E-Postage for Linux?

Posted by Cliff on from the penguins-and-mailmen dept.

tyen asks: "While it's not dead yet (shades of Monty Python), Internet postage on Linux appears to be missing. The biggest player's software is Windows-only, and the other players mimic this requirement. You would be amazed how many businesses will dedicate a computer to printing off postage and shipping labels, why pay an annoying Microsoft tax for such an appliance application? Besides, these Windows-based solutions are heavily GUI-centric, and any integration into Linux-based automated processes would be unacceptably brittle. Has anyone successfully set up their business to print off e-postage from Linux or any other Open Source platform?"

2 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Thoughts... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't believe the UPS or FedEx software comes in a *n?x variant, so the answer is basically, "No."

    The FedEx server runs on Windows, but they give that machine to you with all necessary software installed.

    Communication with the server is done over a TCP socket, using an open protocol (the protocol is weird, but documented). You could definitely submit jobs into the system in an automated way - we have a system at work that does this.

    I'm not sure if printer drivers would be a problem on Unix. FedEx gave us a Zebra printer and said to use the standard / text-only printer driver in Windows. It needs to be shared using SMB, but Samba should be able to handle that. If this doesn't work, you could probably hook the printer up to the machine FedEx gives you.

  2. Re:Thoughts... by tzanger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All the thermal printers I've used with shipping computers have used pretty much standard Epson or HP-GL graphics modes. Set up a generic Epson printer with weird-ass margins and you're set.