[arachne] Re: OT linux drivers was 'handheld printer'

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

Samuel W. Heywood wrote:

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

On Sat, 2009-05-23 at 12:10 -0400, Jason wrote:

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!



 Who doesn't make a printer driver?  Have you looked at CUPS (Common Unix
Printing System).  Most drivers for Linux/Mac are not made by manufacturer.

  Cal

Cal,
While CUPS handles lots of printers, there are plenty it doesn't. In my mind it comes down to voting with your wallet which I do for all new buys I make. But often enough even these days I pick up something used real cheap that doesn't have a driver.
Thankfully it happens less and less these days. Kinda like not supporting DOS, if we keep buy things which only support windows, it'll be slow going. 

Don't believe everything you read on the packaging and in the fine
manual about how the manufacturer of the device supports only Window$.
I NEVER go by that. Google, and my old linux contacts are what I rely on. My caution is that in today's world driver issues are no where near as bad as they used to be. At the same time the linux driver situation isn't as good as it should be either. I have a walk-in closet half full of hw for which I haven't been able to find linux drivers for.
Those of us who hope this year really is "The year of the linux desktop", tend to sell the fact that finding linux drivers isn't nearly the chore it used to be in such a manner that those who would convert think linux has no driver issues anymore.
In really there are plenty of printers, cameras, pdas, media players, et al for which there aren't any linux drivers or for which the linux drivers aren't complete and the user experience with those devices is less than ideal. 

Want some examples from my personal HW collection?
1. 2gb Creative Zen - It's mtp. At first it was a real chore managing files on it. The linux drivers are improving now and it's much easier but still I usually get one or two 'endpoint not connected' errors before I my daily file transfer complete. Plus, even though I've umpteen million variations of video formatting programs with various switches, the best I can manage is a conversion which cuts the video short be a few seconds.
2. Sharp AL-1540CS printer - Seems to be a nice printer but I'll be danged if I can find a linux driver. I'd be tickled pink if this list produced a link to a working driver.
3. Franklin eBoomMan EBM-900 - While the linux drivers are serviceable, this device has a nasty bug which wipes the firmware under certain conditions if the battery drains. I have not been able to reinstall the firmware without windows.
Then there are various other annoyances which the linux pushers fail to mention like the fact that there are no v4l2 web cams for which you can web chat with msn or yahoo. The exception being msn via sip account.
I love linux, have happily used it as my primary home OS for about a decade, and I'd never switch to a non oss os. But the linux fanboys are just too danged zealous and hide or outright lie about the things that "don't just work" for my tastes.
I do many linux desktop installations of many distros and I don't think I've yet had the case where everything 'just worked'. Arachne at FreeLists -- Arachne, The Premier GPL Web Browser/Suite for DOS --

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