Arch Linux

TripleE

Member

From: Houston, TX

Registered: 2006-10-10

Posts: 64

All-in-one Printer (Suggestions)

I am looking for a printer, scanner, copier ($100 price range) that works under Arch.  I have found that the HP Officejet 5610 (http://www.linux.com/articles/114181) works under linux, but I wanted to see if there were any success stories with people using it or other all-in-one printers under arch.  The main thing (looking to turn myself into a paperless home-office) I will be using it for will be scanning documents in, very few pics (if any), and not much copying nor printing of docs.

So if you know of any good scanning software to use (preferably gtk/gnome) that compresses images super tiny (file sizes), yet still keeps them readable when printed or emailed, that would be awesome.

Note:  I just stumbled across the HPLIP driver.  Not sure why I have not heard of it earlier.  The pacman (extra) repo has 1.7.4a, but 2.7.7 is released.  I am guessing it will be updated soon or an AUR will be created.

I know I am talking about HP alot, but this is just because I am use to them.  Any manufacturer will do.

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HP Chromebook 14

Cogar

Member

Registered: 2007-07-22

Posts: 43

Re: All-in-one Printer (Suggestions)

I have not yet run across a printer that I could not set up to work properly in Linux. The same is true for the HP all-in-one printers. (I have set up two of those.) The hplip package should contain all the drivers for HP machines, although I suppose some printer they just released may only be available in an updated package. The existing package in pacman works fine for the printers I have set up. For scanning, I generally use Kooka (I run KDE), although XSane works fine as well. Both are front ends for sane. I believe HP provides more support for Linux than the other printer manufacturers, so it is OK to focus on them. Incidentally, that only goes for their printers. I understand that the HP computers are not necessarily "Linux friendly."

Last edited by Cogar (2007-08-23 16:44:23)

mico

Member

From: Slovenia

Registered: 2004-02-08

Posts: 247

Re: All-in-one Printer (Suggestions)

Most printers work, but not most all-in-one devices.

I bought a Samsung SCX-4100 because it had official linux support and linux drivers were included in package. It turned out to be supported only by a specific kernel version, the installer was very buggy and could not even detect that my kernel (the usual kernel26 from current, nothing special) was not supported and it just messed up my system.

So my advice is to make sure the drivers are available directly from cups, sane or similar projects, not just from vendor, or at least that they will work with any vanilla kernel, preferably without the need to recompile the drivers after each kernel upgrade.

Also, don't trust positive reviews too quickly. Maybe the authors tested the printer only with the recommended distribution.