[clug] Printers for Linux

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Sun, 2004-02-08 at 16:41, Edward C. Lang wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Martin Pool said:
> > On  8 Feb 2004, Pearl Louis <pearl.louis at anu.edu.au> wrote:
> >
> >> I was wondering if people here could give me some advice on which brand
> >> I
> >> should go for?  Epson?  Lexmark?  HP?  Canon?  The criteria I'm looking
> >> at is
> >> firstly it should be a company that is Linux friendly (this is not
> >> idealogical - I just want a printer that's well supported).
> >
> > (I work for HP, but this is my personal opinion.)
> >
> > HP printers work very well under Linux.  The necessary software to
> > talk to USB printers is MIT-style-licenced and plugs straight into
> > CUPS.  On printers with flash slots you can directly mount the
> > CF/MS/SD/etc stick from Linux as a scsi device.
> >
> 
> Also, if you want to quickly and painlessly turn a printer into a
> networked print server, HP JetDirect devices are great. Plug it in, turn
> it on, press   a button to print a test page that lists its MAC address
> and DHCP obtained IP address, point CUPS / LPD at port 9001 (or 9100?) on
> that IP address, and    it's ready for business.

The port is 9100.  The pity is that the cheap versions are parallel
only, and I spent ages fighting with one and an inkjet printer.  With
lasers they are perfect however.

For USB devices, or cases where the price tag is a bit too steep, I
found setting up LTSP clients to work *really* well.  You can hang a
printer off them, and they even listen on port 9100 just like the
JetDirect boxes.

(At Hawker, we have plenty of old PII machines, with onboard USB - we
just boot them off a floppy).

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                 abartlet at pcug.org.au
Manager, Authentication Subsystems, Samba Team  abartlet at samba.org
Student Network Administrator, Hawker College   abartlet at hawkerc.net
http://samba.org     http://build.samba.org     http://hawkerc.net
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