Kodak Easyshare 5100 Printer

susanpenter · 03-03-2008, 07:36 AM

This is a long shot but I was given one of these for my birthday last month and Kodak do not produce drivers and do not intent to. I am running a dual boot system with Win XP and Freespire but I prefer to stay in Freespire. Is there any way I can get Freespire to recognize the printer installed within XP. It is a real pain if I am going to have to reboot every time I want to print something and reboot back afterwards. Even better is there a work around to get it to recognize the printer directly? I'm hoping to do away with Windows once I have had time to become really familiar with Linux - maybe have a go at Ubunto etc

I asked for the Kodak due to their cheap ink policy, I did not realize last month that I would finally be getting round to using Linux rather than just thinking I should!

Thanks for reading and I will be ecstatic if anyone can help.

Susan

pixellany · 03-03-2008, 07:55 AM

On my system, there is a Kodak driver named "easyshare-printer-dock". I would try that first. (If you don't have it, first run an update on cups and maybe a printer-driver package.)

You can also try Turbo-print.

Quote:

Kodak do not produce drivers and do not intent to

I'm curious about this. Did someone at Kodak tell you this? Since HP and Epson already have good Linux support, I would think the others would eventually follow.

susanpenter · 03-03-2008, 08:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pixellany

On my system, there is a Kodak driver named "easyshare-printer-dock". I would try that first. (If you don't have it, first run an update on cups and maybe a printer-driver package.)

You can also try Turbo-print.

I'm curious about this. Did someone at Kodak tell you this? Since HP and Epson already have good Linux support, I would think the others would eventually follow.

Yes, I rang Kodak and that is exactly what they said to me!
There is a couple of drivers showing under Kodak but they don't look as if they would be for all in one printers.

Secondly I'm considering giving Ubunto a try, will this make a difference?

susanpenter · 03-03-2008, 08:28 AM

My printer is currently unsupported by Turbo Print, I've asked the question on the forum as to whether they will begin supporting it.

pixellany · 03-03-2008, 06:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by susanpenter

Secondly I'm considering giving Ubunto a try, will this make a difference?

No. The core SW for printing (CUPS) is the same on all systems--- ditto for the common driver packages.

Why not try the driver I mentioned? You can't hurt anything.

Also, look at:
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting

pixellany · 03-03-2008, 06:48 PM

Here's my revised ranking of (photo) printers, based on this thread:

Linux support:
1. HP
2. Epson
3. Canon
4. Various others
5. Kodak

Print Quality:
1. Epson
2. Canon or maybe Kodak (especially dye-sub)
3. HP
4. Everyone else (I would only consider the 1st 3 for photos)