My 2 cents-
I currently run Mandrake 8.2 on my desktop. I have a scanner, printer
and fax modem which all work nicely, although they are separate rather
than an all-in-one unit. My printer is a HP Deskjet 932C, and it works
just dandy with Linux. The only issue I have ever had with printers
under Linux was with a Lexmark which used Windows software to monitor
ink usage, and I junked it rather than deal with Windows.
With regard to scanners, scsi is nice, and I use an Epson perfection 636
scsi which works great either under XSane or the GIMP. Parallel port
scanners under Linux (the kind that share with the printer) are to be
feared, I think, but the place to go and find out which scanners work
best for Linux is
http://www.sane-project.org/
As far as faxmodems go, just make sure that you have a real modem and
not a winmodem. Many modems now state on the box if they are Linux
compatible (progress!)
My only grievances are that StarOffice does not communicate with my
scanner, and that KDEPrintFax does not cooperate with XSane, s I can
fax, but I have to save the scan as a postscript file and then use
KDEPrintfax to send it rather than scanning and faxing in one operation
either with StarOffice or XSane.
--
Lee Einer
Dos Manos Jewelry
http://www.dosmanosjewelry.com
Kevin wrote:
>On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 12:40, Charlie Bullen wrote:
>
>
>>Hi, any ideas on a combination printer/fax/scanner that will work under
>>Mandrake 9.2. Preferably USB. All I need to do from the linux side is
>>print. I would also like to be able to scan, but not necessary. Faxing
>>is nit an issue uinder linux.
>>
>>
>
>I have a some general comments in this area. This reply represents
>months of pent-up frustration with Linux printing and one particular
>printer. Apologies in advance for the length. Recommendations for any
>of my problems below would be _eagerly_ accepted!
>
>My wife has an HP PSC2110 Printer/Scanner/Copier. It's a great device.
>However, just like most modern combo-printer-thingies, it was obviously
>designed as a slave to wormdows. This thing even has buttons on the
>control panel that will cause M$ Word or M$ Frontpage, or M$ Whatever to
>pop open after a scan. It is seriously crippled without the win32
>bloatware that comes with it.
>
>I have been able to make most things work under linux, thanks to
>http://hpoj.sourceforge.net. The printer driver seems to work, but many
>apps have problems aligning the margins. For some reason, it also seems
>like _many_ linux apps default to A4 paper size which also causes
>alignment problems if you don't notice it and change it.
>
>I also just discovered that Adobe Photoshop running under wine is almost
>unusable because of the way it interacts with the win32 print subsystem
>(probably not the printer's fault). Any printer-related command barks
>about having "no default printer" in Windows/Control Panel. My wine
>config is correctly configured with a "default" printer. Ugh.
>
>Changing the printer resolution in the hpoj driver seems to be the only
>way to adjust resolution. The driver settings appear to override the
>resolution buttons on the top of the printer ("Fast/Normal/Best"). Not
>a big deal, but the r00t passwd is required to get to the driver
>settings and the CUPS daemon must be bounced for the change to take
>effect. It's quite a click-fest to swap between printing documents and
>printing high-res digital photos. In fact, my wife just gave up and now
>she makes me do it.
>
>Network printing is a pain with this printer. I have it locally
>connected to a USB port on my wife's linux box. CUPS is the print
>system there. Printing to this printer across the network will _not_
>cause the printer to awaken from sleep mode. The print job will sit in
>the queue and eventually time-out. To prevent this, we have to walk
>over to the printer and manually wake it up by pressing any button on
>the top. The printer's control panel does not provide any method for
>disabling this power-save mode. The best I could do was set the sleep
>timer for 12 hours.
>
>Scanning works with xsane, but the UI for that app is like Chinese for
>my wife and daughter. They can't make heads-or-tails of it, so I end up
>doing every scan and saving the images to their home dirs. Also, the
>hpoj driver seems to be slightly broken here. It ignores a 1/2" band of
>the scanner glass along the top edge and the left edge. Meaning, the an
>8.5x11 page will be cropped to about 7x10.3 and you will be missing the
>rest of the image. I have tried everything I can think of. I _cannot_
>solve this maddening problem.
>
>Copying works fine, since it does not interact with the PC.
>
>Whew!
>
>...Kevin
>
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