[clug] Printer recommendations

[Chris Smart]

On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 08:40 +1000, Pilcher, Fred wrote:
> Can anyone recomend an inexpensive laser printer that'll "just work"?
> I've given up trying to get my friend's Canon LBP3000 working under
> Linux.
> 

Hey Fred,

Not sure if you know of this site, but it is your number one source of
information regarding printing under Linux:
"http://linuxprinting.org"

Ordinarily I would say that most Canon LBP printers are paperweights,
but according to the website it looks like Canon has released a
proprietary driver:
"http://openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Canon-LBP3000"

There's no link though, and I doubt it will be easy to get working (I
presume it is a binary application and drier, not a PPD which you can
drop into CUPS).

Samsung have some pretty cheap printers - both in price and quality -
but they are pretty good at releasing CUPS drivers. Some of their
multifunction devices also work with Linux, but use their custom
software for the multifunction side (although the scanning is just a
SANE driver, so it might work in other programs).

I love the little HP 1015 printers, although I doubt you can get them
anymore - probably replaced by the 1020 series ($200 odd) which has good
support through the foo2zjs driver ("http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/"). I'd be
more inclined to go a high quality model such as 1022 which has
"perfect" support at $299.

Either way, research what's cheap and available, and check the website
to see how well it works and what driver it uses. If the driver exists
in your distro's package management system, or there's a PPD (that
doesn't also rely on a 3rd party CUPS engine) then it should be a
breeze.

Hope that helps.

-c