Re: printer recommendations

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:14:04 +1030
Brett Lymn <blymn%baesystems.com.au@localhost> wrote:

> 
> People,
> 
> After many years of managing to have a "paperless" home I find myself
> needing to get a printer of some sort.  I am not fussed about
> technology (ink jet vs laser) - what I am more interested in is
> getting a rock solid solution that will Just Work(tm) with NetBSD.
> Colour would be a bonus but a basic black & white would be good.
> 
> Anyone have any recommendations or devices to steer clear of?  Either
> USB or (if they exist these days) parallel would be fine for me.
> 
I'm very happy with a Brother HL-5150D laser printer.  I think it's
USB-attachable; mine is hooked via a parallel cable to an old NAT+print
server I had lying around.  There was a .PPD file on the CD; with it,
cups was quite happy.

I suggest going to linuxprinting.org and evaluating the instructions
there.  Anything that requires a vendor-supplied Linux driver is going
to be tough.  It took me several days to get a Brother MFC-5460CN to
work, and it was painful enough that I just let one of my machines act
as the print server, rather than trying to replicate whatever it is I
did on my other computers...

I see that Greg has committed a gutenprint package; I'm going to try
that soon to deal with another printer not reachable except through it.


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb