Stop Microsoft
All Things Microsoft => Microsoft Software => Topic started by: worker201 on 7 September 2006, 07:34
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In my office, we have this benign little piece of hardware called a Lexmark Z65 printer. It's a pretty standard shitty little inkjet printer. I've installed it for Windows many times. It's simple, really, you plug the printer in, and Windows tries to find drivers for it - but it can't, so you have to insert this installation disk. The installation disk installs, along with the drivers, this printer management software - whether you want it to or not (the drivers are encoded, and the management installer decodes and installs them). Wait, what do I need printer management for? Print management is something that the OS does, right? Since Windows was (theoretically) capable of printing before installing this printer, I guess it is. But Windows doesn't say "Printing started" when a print job starts! Or say "Printing complete" when a print job finishes.
Thanks to some fucking around, I brought my Apple MacBookPro into the office today. I wanted to print something, so I plugged the printer in. Nothing happened. I figured it was fucked up, and it needed that software installed, and the printer management software doesn't work on OSX. But just to be sure, I opened my Prefs and looked under printers. Hoho, there it was, the Lexmark Z65, ready to print. I was printing perfect documents within 20 seconds of connecting this thing. However, there was some confusion later, when the print job had completed, yet no electronic voice said "Printing complete".
Out of curiousity, I tried connecting the printer to my Linux box (FC5), just to see what kind of crazy error messages I would get. I figured there would be some kind of device error or something. Alas, nothing happened. Was it the same kind of nothing that happened on the Mac? To be safe, I tried to randomly print something. Presto, a print dialog box comes up, telling me that my printing will be done on a Lexmark Z65, controlled by CUPS. Yay! However, there was some confusion later, when the print job had completed, yet no electronic voice said "Printing complete".
Now, I've kinda skipped over one small little detail here: the printer management software that installs in Windows brings up this nifty little graphic that theoretically keeps track of how much ink you have left in your color and black print cartridges. You don't see that in OSX or FC5. I guess with those OSes, you have to look at the page and guess that your cartridge is dying. Just like we have been for the last 10 years.
Similar phenomenon can be seen with other peripherals. For instance, my iPod works extra well in OSX, works just great in Linux, and not at all without reformatting in Windows. My Nikon Coolpix 4300 has been auto-detected on my Mac since Jaguar, and is detected just fine in Linux, but I cannot get it to work on any PC because I've thrown the driver cd away.
Overall, what has this particular instance taught us about the "It Just Works" argument? That in respect to common peripheral detection, Linux and OSX are far superior to Windows. That discs of drivers are only necessary for Windows. That people who complain of shitty peripheral detection are simply using shitty peripherals. That many of the techniques and processes that Windroids have accepted as necessary are overly complicated. That almost no one has actually seen the Windows native printer management software.
And that Windows sucks.
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And in Windows Vista, things will get worse conserning drivers.
I posted this thread (http://www.microsuck.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10040&highlight=vista+drivers) a while back about non Microsoft signed drivers not being accepted.
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Lexmark sucks btw ;)
At least.. I don't have anything good to say about the POS Lexmark printer we got..
I think we could do with a printer + scanner ... Anyone got any recommendations? Obviously it needs to have drivers for GNU/Linux.. HP released free drivers for some of their printers, and their printers shouldn't be that bad, so I might go with one of them..
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Lexmark sucks btw ;)
At least.. I don't have anything good to say about the POS Lexmark printer we got..
I think we could do with a printer + scanner ... Anyone got any recommendations? Obviously it needs to have drivers for GNU/Linux.. HP released free drivers for some of their printers, and their printers shouldn't be that bad, so I might go with one of them..
My experience Lexmark also made me hate them. For recommendations, I have an HP PSC 1315 all-in-one and it works great with Linux.
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Microtek is really bad with Linux. My Scanmaker 4900 at the office is absolutely unsupported in Linux.
Sane supported device list, updated June 2006:
http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html
Pick one with "complete" support
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Had a lexmark Z53, neat little printer....until I got my Canon iP3000
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My experience Lexmark also made me hate them. For recommendations, I have an HP PSC 1315 all-in-one and it works great with Linux.
Yeah Lexmark is the worst printer company out there AFAIK. I have an HP PSC 1610 All-in-One and you can do everything you want with it using hplip. You can scan, print, copy, anything. It's awesome, and the ink doesn't dry on the cartrige like with most Canon and Lexmark printers.
Here's a list of HPLIP supported devices and whether you can scan or not:
http://hplip.sourceforge.net/supported_devices/combined.html (http://hplip.sourceforge.net/supported_devices/combined.html)
There's also hpoj, but I've found that they support fewer printers (especially scan support ... I cannot scan with my printer using these drivers, cuz it's not supported):
http://hpoj.sourceforge.net/suplist.shtml (http://hpoj.sourceforge.net/suplist.shtml)
and if you don't like HP or want more options, here's the site I used to select my printer:
http://www.linuxprinting.org/suggested.html
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i find the opposite to the little lexmark story, i have had not many printers but my experience is that using the proprietary software, they work under windows. not having any proprietary software to install under mandrake, fedora, slack, debian etc, means that the printers don't work, work erratically, or take a bit of effort to get working.
the reason for this has nothing to do with windows being better or worse, but the intention of hardware manufacturers to release supporting software, in my opinion. I do know one thing, without the software under windows, the printer would not work at all. Your chances are much better with fedora than windows, if you have lost your driver disk.
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I have a Lexmark Z52. Except for that time it "broke" (attached to Windows 95) and I put it in the closet for 2 years before taking it back out and having it work perfectly (attached to Linux), it's been pretty good. Sometimes under Linux and OS X, the color won't print right (everything is banded, even with a new cartridge), but I rarely print in color so I don't care. Sure, I don't have the "printing complete" in OS X (which i thought was amusing when I bought it), but at least I can plug/unplug the thing while going to/coming from classes without having the OS go apeshit over it.
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I've got a HP Deskjet 3845 on my LAN server using hplip and CUPS, that is accessed by 2 PC's and my laptop using IPP/HTTP, HP ftw!
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HP Deskjet 697c - works in all linux and windows, even for photo quality.
Lexmark X2350 Works only in windows. It's one of those all in one jobs. Someone write an open source driver for this damn it!
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Lexmark X2350 Works only in windows. It's one of those all in one jobs. Someone write an open source driver for this damn it!
No, dammit, you write it! If you want to use it, put a little effort in! I'll be glad to help with the documentation.
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Someone write an open source driver for this damn it!
Or write a polite (or impolite) letter to Lexmark about it..
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No, dammit, you write it! If you want to use it, put a little effort in! I'll be glad to help with the documentation.
I volunteer you. Come on over to my place we'll have beer and coding.
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That sounds fine. But I think it would be easier and cheaper to just trick Void into writing it :D
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It's not as easy as you think, especially since Lexmark refuses to provide even basic tools to get it done. (They say they provide a toolkit to write Linux drivers, but it doesn't work ... as one person put it ... even if you knew how to use the toolkit it wouldn't help you any)
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damn it...
I wonder...could the printer drivers be run yunder wine or some other prog? hmmm...now I'm thinking...
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It's not as easy as you think, especially since Lexmark refuses to provide even basic tools to get it done. (They say they provide a toolkit to write Linux drivers, but it doesn't work ... as one person put it ... even if you knew how to use the toolkit it wouldn't help you any)
That's probably true. But I bet it would be possible, even if it was a lot of hard work. I figure the first thing to do would be to install the printer on a Windows computer, and then watch the control sentences the software spews out to the spooler. If you have a basic knowlege of how other print software works, this will probably be easier, because you will probably see sentences you recognize. From there it is just a matter of writing a 2way interpreter for the sentences into some basic control language that the target OS's spooler can understand.
Unfortunately, any of the above would probably find you at odds with the hardware/software license agreement, and Lexmark could, in theory, have you shot.
So, the only reason certain bits of hardware don't work in Linux is that nobody has the time or the desire to handle the risk and build the driver. Eventually, though, someone will get around to it. Might be a hundred years from now, but I'm sure it will get done.
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i wonder if you could jsut run the dll's and drivers and shit
and make the program look for them there
then you are set up :) any program, anywhere
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OK...one would start here... Lexmark x2350 driver download page (http://downloads.lexmark.com/cgi-perl/downloads.cgi?ccs=227:5:0:487:0:0&emeaframe=&target=http://downloads.lexmark.com/cgi-perl/downloads.cgi&target=http://downloads.lexmark.com/cgi-perl/downloads.cgi&&req=:::::)
Then Check here Firmware compatibility (http://www.lexmark.com/lexmark/sequentialem/home/0,6959,204816596_666676883_0_en,00.html)
And the Publications (http://www.lexmark.com/publications/eng/index.html)
Then the Linux Developers kit (http://www.lexmark.com/lexmark/sequentialem/home/0,6959,204816596_659668505_0_en,00.html)
Then I'll see where I get from there.
HEY! Looky what I found! Lexmark Print Drivers for Unix & Linux Systems Users Guide (http://www.lexmark.com/publications/pdfs/print_drivers/en/ug.pdf)
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That would be a hack. It might work for one system, and you might actually only think it's working when it actually isn't. That's probably been done for just about everything. But it isn't a long term popular solution. So it usually doesn't get around. Most Linux docs would still call it a problem.
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This looks encouraging...
http://www.lexmark.com/lexmark/sequentialem/home/0,6959,204816596_659668508_0_en,00.html
Here's the linux requirements list (http://www.lexmark.com/lexmark/sequentialem/home/0,6959,204816596_659668517_0_en,00.html)
Requirements
System Requirements
1. Linux Kernel 2.4x or higher
2. GCC 3.2
3. gtkmm version 2.0.2.4
4. sigc ++ version 1.2.4
5. make
6. enscript
7. magic
8. Lexmark USB Scanner Device Driver (for Lexmark AIO Printers ONLY)
Hardware Requirements
1. P2 400 or equivalent
2. 64 MB RAM
3. 20 MB of Free HD space
Build Requirements
1. GCC compiler version 3.2
2. CUPS development libraries
3. SANE-Backend development libraries version 1.0.13
NOTE: LLPDDK has been built and validated on the following Linux releases: RedHat 8.0, RedHat 9.0, Mandrake 9.0, Mandrake 9.1, SuSE 8.1 and SuSE 8.2.
The Lexmark USB Scanner Device Driver package contains the open source codes and the Readme file.
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Shit...If I install magic, I loose my Ubuntu Desktop and gnome volume manager...will this be ok? Test time!
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Lexmark sucks btw ;)
At least.. I don't have anything good to say about the POS Lexmark printer we got..
I think we could do with a printer + scanner ... Anyone got any recommendations? Obviously it needs to have drivers for GNU/Linux.. HP released free drivers for some of their printers, and their printers shouldn't be that bad, so I might go with one of them..
HP seems to be hit-or-miss, Every bit of HP equipment I've ever had never works right, including an HP Deskjet.
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I have a Lexmark Z82 printer/scanner combo. It's a proprietary piece of shit that isn't even recognizable by real OSes, is not TWAIN compliant, uses a proprietary, licensed interface, and scans only through a steaming pile of un-Wine-able feces called SmarThru. Oh, and get this... they even charge the XP windroids extra for a version of the software that'll "run" on Shitdows. Is it obvious yet that the damn thing wouldn't even be in my home if I'd have had to pay for it?
It's going out back to be sledgehammered to oblivion just as soon as I get a respectable scanner... any ideas for more destructive ends for it?
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yeah get some realy xplosive shit in the ink cartrige
and then print a 100% black page ;]
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HP seems to be hit-or-miss, Every bit of HP equipment I've ever had never works right, including an HP Deskjet.
How is that ? Got more details on what works and what doesn't ?
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HP Deskjet 6980. Issues with the OSX drivers, often the printer didn't communicate at all. The Windows drivers seem to be a bit better.
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Ok, but we were talking about the Linux drivers ... weren't we ?
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OK...one would start here... Lexmark x2350 driver download page (http://downloads.lexmark.com/cgi-perl/downloads.cgi?ccs=227:5:0:487:0:0&emeaframe=&target=http://downloads.lexmark.com/cgi-perl/downloads.cgi&target=http://downloads.lexmark.com/cgi-perl/downloads.cgi&&req=:::::)
Then Check here Firmware compatibility (http://www.lexmark.com/lexmark/sequentialem/home/0,6959,204816596_666676883_0_en,00.html)
And the Publications (http://www.lexmark.com/publications/eng/index.html)
Then the Linux Developers kit (http://www.lexmark.com/lexmark/sequentialem/home/0,6959,204816596_659668505_0_en,00.html)
Then I'll see where I get from there.
HEY! Looky what I found! Lexmark Print Drivers for Unix & Linux Systems Users Guide (http://www.lexmark.com/publications/pdfs/print_drivers/en/ug.pdf)
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/drivers_linux ;)
I've stumbled upon a few tutorials for creating Linux drivers, but that one actually looks like I might be able to handle it, and it looks nice..
(something wrong with posting links for some reason..)
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Good luck man ... you're gonna need a shitload of it on this endeavor.
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Good luck man ... you're gonna need a shitload of it on this endeavor.
Hmm? I amn't trying to actually make any specific drivers.. I'm just interesting in how the drivers work and that.
And if I could really contribute to the few free driver projects I'm interested in, then all the better. Probably what'll happen, though, is I'll get to page seven, take a tea break and never get back to it.
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Actually, that looks much less confusing than the lexmark manual. It's been real slow going so far and all I've managed to do was get it to acknowledge that there is a printer/scanner there, but it spits loads of errors at me...which is good because I haven't even started on getting the damn thing to work yet. If I knew how much was going to be involved in this, I probably would have kept my mouth shut. But, I didn't, so I'm going to build that driver, then I'm going to give something back to void for all of his help, and something back to the project for all it's given me.