On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 10:17:54 -0400
John J. Foster wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 22, 2005 at 09:34:13AM -0300, Mauro Faccenda wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > Does anyone can recommend a well-supported inkjet printer for using with 
> > Linux?
> > 
> 
> HP Deskjet 5550 works just fine

I'll just weigh in here for Hewlett Packard, (although I am told that if you 
want highest quality digital photo prints go for epson).

Quite simply HP support linux with good quality tools that are free in
both senses of the word - no $ and GPL.

Just chack that your printer is on the compatibilty list at
http://hpinkjet.sf.net and then install hplip 0.9.5 (which you may need
to get from bugs.gentoo.org.

Here is a re-post of a message I sent to my local lug earlier this week:

<quote>
Regular readers will be aware that my standard answers to the "which
printer/multi-function device should I buy?" are "Hewlett Packard", "HP"
and "Hewlett Packard", mainly because of their linux support. 

I am further impressed now that I have upgraded from the old hpoj/hpijs
drivers to the newer hplip drivers for my multi-function HP PSC 2210
printer/scanner/card reader/fax machine. 

hpoj required some pretty horrible command line stuff to get the printer
going, very unintuitive command structure and a case of following a set
of disconnected web pages. Sure it worked, but needed improvement.

The new beast was easier to set up and now includes an (optional) gui.
Screenshot available here:

http://rout.co.nz/hp-device-mgr.png

As you can see it has various panels, the first one has buttons to
trigger printing (brings up a gui where you can add files then print
them), scan (fires up xsane), Access photo cards (its own gui giving
thumbnails and the ability to copy some or all to another directory
etc). However Send fax is not yet implemented (nor was it from windows
when I bought the device). The programs that are actually fired up can
be configured withing the gui - ie you could bring up kooka instead of
xsane for scanning.

There is access to the print logs, various maintanance functions, and it
tells you how much ink you have left.

The functionality is also available on the command line, for example
hp-levels returns a nice little summary of the ink levels. hp-photo is
an ftp like client to access the photo card reader (actually not limited
to photos of course, its just a regular flash card reader).

All very nicely done, plus of course there are supplied PPD files so the
printer can work just fine with all the normal linux printing mechanisms
like cups. Whats more the icon to start the gui installed itself nicely
in the gnome menu :-)

I also discovered in the process how to get windows to print directly to
cups, without samba being involved, so that was a nice bonus.

And no, HP are not paying me to write this!
</quote>

> 
> -- 
> It is not unusual for those at the wrong end of the club to have a
> clearer picture of reality than those who wield it.
>                                                       Noam Chomsky
> 

-- 
Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

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