I am the owner of a Eeepc 4G (OS: Xandros)a need little computer. Out of the box a wonderfull machine.
But no network printer driver for my Brother MFC 420CN
I searched the internet and found the Brother down load center
http://welcome.solutions.brother.com...html#MFC-420CN
I do like tinkering but was not successful either choosing the right driver, or the right package, and could not find support and or step by step instructions,which I understand, similar to installing drivers in Windows.
So I decided to change the Xandros OS for the Windows XP lite.
You all know 4 Gig does not get you very far, even with a light version of windows
Xandros, including a lot of progams took only a fraction of the C drive as opposed to windows.
Now I am back to square one. I hear so many positive comments about Linux/ Xandros, So I like to give this OS an other chance
I reloaded Xandros but need some help in choosing the right Brother driver (see brother Web site), and some step by step installation instructions .
Who out there, is up to the task and get me over the Hump and convince me that, installing drivers in Linux/Xandros operating systems is not as complicated as its looks like.

Caninst

http://www.ehow.com/how_5107960_add-...ter-linux.html
... step by step instructions for a network printer
http://www.openprinting.org/show_pri...ther-MFC-420CN
... cups information for your printer model
... from the looks of things, the driver is already installed (most distros). Did you look?

FWIW: the killer distro for your notebook is UNR. IIRC: the Xandros that comes with these netbooks is pretty limited.

Simon

Thank you for your response and I am encouraged by your advise. There were several printer drivers in the Xandros OS but no MSC 420cn.
I will also consider to install UNR. Please let me know what are the benefits as compared to Xandros?
I must wait till the weekend and I will post my results.



Caninst

Simon
I will start with trying to install the printer driver to Xandros and when I get familiair with some of the methods of navigating in the OS I will try UNR
My first question is which one of the drivers should I use and why four choices for my printer? Again it is maybe an obvious question to you I am a newcomer to linux and its distros

MFC-420CN
Download Format Version Size Release Date
LPR driver rpm 1.0.2-1 743 KB 2006.Mar.31
cupswrapper driver rpm 1.0.0-1 13 KB 2006.Mar.31
LPR driver deb 1.0.2-1 740 KB 2006.Mar.31
cupswrapper driver deb 1.0.2-3 12 KB 2007.Jul.11

For linux distros, your first port of call is the special repositories. These allow dependenceis and updates to be managed seamlessly and without fuss. You only download drivers seperately as a last resort.

Xandros is based on debian. You want to find out how to access the xandros apt repositories for your installation and get the updates. You'll also want to install the full cups support - that will have the driver you need.

Since Xandros is a commercial distro, you may have to pay for the access.

The different suggested downloads are all for the same driver - the deb file is for debian based distros and the rpm files are for redhat based distros.

This is another reason to use UNR if you can: the software you want is already there, and additional software is available, free of charge, from the apt repos for Ubuntu.

Thank you Simon for the wonderful explanation.
You are a great help .
If I remember well, Xandros came light and fairly complete, with access to an apt repository.
The main reason, for me to change to windows was, that there was no seamless lan network driver for my printer in the repository.
Since I have not yet removed my Windows XP, and If I understand you well, you recommand to avoid Xandros all together and jump right away into UNR ?
I looked at the website and it seems very promising however the eeepc has only a 7" screen is that a problem?
The base UNR os, does it come with the various sw like Open office, Mozilla , virus protection, Adobe, Skype, ect at a fairly small footprint ? remember computer only has 4Gig ?
Xandros had all these sw packages integrated with the base OS,and consumed around 1Gig of the HD

Caninst

I am running kubuntu 9.10 on my little 4G eee701. It works fine, even with a 7" screen, but the OS pretty much filled up the 4G internal SDD, so I just put my /home on an 8GB SD card in the little slot.
You may like to do the same if you decide on UNR and want a decent-sized /home

tredegar

Thank you for your comment. But I think I am going back to Xandros and try to upload from a repository the network driver for my printer .