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The HP Linux Imaging and Printing System
Hewlett Packard
has launched a new open-source Linux project that
supports its printing, scanning, and digital camera products, HPLIP.
HPLIP has been released under version 2 of the GNU General Public License.
Hewlett-Packard is proud to announce the initial release of HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (HPLIP). HPLIP is a complete single and multi-function printing device connectivity solution for users of Linux OS. The goal of this project is to provide "radically simple" printing, scanning, photo card access, and device management to the consumer and business Linux user.
HPLIP is part of the HP Linux Printing Project: "The HP driver project provides printing support for more than 300 printer models, including, DeskJet, OfficeJet, Photosmart, Business Inkjet and some LaserJet." The HPLIP feature list includes:
The HP Inkjet Driver Project Readme document goes into more information on the project. One interesting detail of the project is the smorgasbord of licenses used: "In general all applications are covered by the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the backend is covered by a MIT license. The printer driver HPIJS uses a BSD license." Dependencies include a Linux kernel at or above 2.4.19, GNU Ghostscript, Foomatic, Qt, PyQt, Python, CUPS, net-snmp, and most major Linux distributions. The initial (version 0.8.1) release was superseded by version 0.8.2, which fixes a number of newly discovered bugs. See the end of the Readme document for change details. The software configured and built with no problems on a (crusty old) Red Hat 9 system, the documentation on installation is up to date, but the usage information is still forthcoming, according to the README. HP should be commended for coming up with a genuine open-source solution for connecting their products to Linux, we hope the model encourages other companies to do the same. (Log in to post comments)
The HP Linux Imaging and Printing System Posted Dec 9, 2004 5:09 UTC (Thu) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link] Wow. Is this a recent event? This is truly amazing news. Anyone want to buy a cheap as muck lexmark z700 for 20 euro? How about 10. Okay then 5, you're breaking my arm. Seriously though, this has to be the most significant hardware related news for Linux that I've heard in a while. Well done HP.
The HP Linux Imaging and Printing System Posted Dec 9, 2004 8:39 UTC (Thu) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link] And just when I was in the market for b&w laser printer and waveringbetween Brother (who has linux drivers, but closed source) and HP (who appeared to have nothing much at all). This is making my decision a lot easier.
The HP Linux Imaging and Printing System Posted Dec 9, 2004 9:47 UTC (Thu) by tomsi (subscriber, #2306) [Link] I have been using linux with HP printers for years. And have never really had any problems.
The HP Linux Imaging and Printing System Posted Dec 10, 2004 2:34 UTC (Fri) by kberg (subscriber, #4963) [Link] I own and use a Brother HL-5150D and did not need to use thier drivers. The machine it's connected to runs Fedora Core 2. All I did was connect it to the USB port, import the PPD file from the printer's install CD into Fedora's printer configuration utility and configure it like any other printer. It works great. Duplexing also works great. The printer is available across my home network via CUPS. If you don't want to bother with importing their PPD file, the generic postscript driver should work fine for any Brother printer that supports BR-Script 3.
The HP Linux Imaging and Printing System Posted Dec 16, 2004 11:43 UTC (Thu) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link] I've a Kyocera laser printer (1020-D), which comes with a PPD file forLinux, and doesn't need any further driver support, because it's a PostScript printer.
Debian packages by xmas Posted Dec 9, 2004 11:56 UTC (Thu) by hmh (subscriber, #3838) [Link] As the proud, overworked and slightly insane co-maintainer of hpijs, I am on it. I hope to have it uploaded to Debian experimental by xmas. Anyone that is crazy enough and experienced enough to try to help, please drop by the pkg-hpijs Alioth project in about a week or so. Do not expect hplip for Debian Sarge, I doubt very much so that it will be on shape that fast, unless Torsten gets locked up at home without anything else to do for a few weeks... Expect official backports for Sarge when it gets stable enough, though. Thank you HP for the nice xmas present!
The HP Linux Imaging and Printing System Posted Dec 9, 2004 14:37 UTC (Thu) by utoddl (subscriber, #1232) [Link] This is some seriously encouraging news. But conspicuously absent from the list of supported printers are any of the ill-fated PPA models of which the DeskJet 720 series was an extremely big seller at one point. Any idea how this relates to the pnm2ppa project which allows Linux machines to drive PPA printers? For the curious/uninformed: The idea behind the PPA models was that the printer could be a significantly cheaper if the resource intensive computation (color tweaking etc.) was handled on the PC side where the user already had more computing power than he knew what to do with, and the printer could be a dumb ink squirter and paper handler.
That'll influence my purchases Posted Dec 9, 2004 16:58 UTC (Thu) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link] This will definitely influence my purchases, and I suspect others. So let's see, HP supports customers, and thus sells more products. Sounds reasonable to me.
The HP Linux Imaging and Printing System Posted Dec 10, 2004 13:48 UTC (Fri) by mab (subscriber, #314) [Link] This will definitely influence my purchase. Pity about the Qt, PyQt dependencies. maybe a GTK offering in the future:)
The HP Linux Imaging and Printing System Posted Dec 10, 2004 16:59 UTC (Fri) by coolian (guest, #14818) [Link] And maybe not. Why change it if it ain't broke?I would rather have them put their muscle into making it better, not prettier. PyQT is pretty enough to not worry about things that don't matter. Stop stroking your widgets and get back to work.
The HP Linux Imaging and Printing System Posted Dec 18, 2004 16:56 UTC (Sat) by Dr_O (guest, #26762) [Link] That is the beauty... it is open source so if you don't like something you can change it. (or pay someone to change it for you!)
language nit Posted Dec 16, 2004 22:36 UTC (Thu) by guest01 (guest, #25274) [Link]
Should be ensure.
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