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I know this question gets asked every now and then. I checked for similar threads but none of them are very current.
I need to buy an "all-in-one" printer for my wife. She has minimal computer skills so it needs to be easy to use. She will use it for print and scan. Her computer is running Fedora 13. Any suggestions?
Location: Northeastern Michigan, where Carhartt is a Designer Label
Distribution: Slackware 32- & 64-bit Stable
Posts: 3,541
Rep:
Hewlett-Packard.
H-P provides the best Linux support I am aware of -- for all their printers -- and they provide HPLIP, a printer management/CUPS interface utility that works the way you would expect it to.
I have two printers (and a plotter and some other stuff), a Business Inkjet 228tn (PostScript, Ethernet) and a Photosmart C4680 (printer, scanner, copier), both of which are managed by HPLIP and I experience zero problems with either one (the scanning function is accessed from XSane, again, trouble-free). Now neither of these are brand-spanking new cutting-edge machines (the 2280tn is about 10 years old, in fact) but be aware that H-P immediately adds support to HPLIP for their full line (and, ain't nobody else provides that support).
Your distribution may already have HPLIP installed; if not, check the distribution application repository or the H-P web site.
Throwing in my vote for HP. And if you go to the HPLIP website, you can see the models that are known to be supported and can avoid picking one you can't use.
To be honest, unless you grab a very obscure one, Fedora should just detect and install the correct drivers with minimal action from you or your wife.
Sadly, I cannot give you the link to the list of working HP printers, because the linuxfoundation sites are down. It used to be: http://www.openprinting.org/printers
Brother's AIO should work with most linux distros. I have a MFC-5440cn and have very good usage using Mandriva/Mageia and Debian based distros. It did work great with Fedora 13 but for some reason, I couldn't get it to work with Fedora 15.
Today I got the HP Photosmart Plus B210a. Installing the printer part was easy. The scanner part, not so much.
The install wizard at http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web...ard/index.html is ok but I soon found myself in
dependency hell. I ran the install script and it told me that I needed 6 packages installed but only told me the 1st one. I had to
run the script, install a package, run the script, install a package, etc. six times to find out what to install. After I
finished installing all of the dependencies and the script continued, the script told me that I needed to either disconnect and
reconnect the printer or reboot my computer. Since only Windoze guys reboot I selected disconnect the printer. That didn't work.
I re-ran the script from the beginning and selected reboot and it finally worked.
Brother or HP, as far I know HP's print head comes with the cartridge, so you can refile the cartridge if you short of cash and wouldn't like to get in to usual Ink trap, buy a low price printer and pay through the nose for the ink cartridge
Today I got the HP Photosmart Plus B210a. Installing the printer part was easy. The scanner part, not so much.
The install wizard at http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web...ard/index.html is ok but I soon found myself in
dependency hell. I ran the install script and it told me that I needed 6 packages installed but only told me the 1st one. I had to
run the script, install a package, run the script, install a package, etc. six times to find out what to install. After I
finished installing all of the dependencies and the script continued, the script told me that I needed to either disconnect and
reconnect the printer or reboot my computer. Since only Windoze guys reboot I selected disconnect the printer. That didn't work.
I re-ran the script from the beginning and selected reboot and it finally worked.
As of now, everything seems to be working fine.
You should have gone with fedora's version of HP lip. I imagine a simple
Quote:
yum search hplip
would have told you which package to install. A yum install xxx would have gotten you up and running in no time.
I use openSUSE and my hp aio worked with a simple hplip install using yast.
Golden rule with Linux software installation - Whenever possible install software using your distribution's package manager.
I use Ubuntu. I downloaded the Install Wizard from http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/release_notes.html. It automatically downloaded and built all dependencies from me. It prompted me for a restart, then, upon rebooting I ran hp-setup, which found the USB-connected printer, set it up. Thereafter, I was successfully able to print (except for the thunderous racket it made).
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