Hardware that Just Works [LWN.net]

Hardware that Just Works

Posted Jan 11, 2007 11:35 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524)
Parent article: Hardware that Just Works

Samsung has improved a *LOT* recently too. To the point where I wandered into a electronic-shop in germany, looking for a cheap laserprinter that works with Linux.

I was shocked to discover that, not only do the Samsung-printers come with "Works with Linux" and tux on the box, but they are even clueful enough to include .deb .rpm and .tgz drivers on the included "driver-cd", along with instructions on where to find updated drivers, and a list of which distributions will autodetect and Just Work with the printer.

Would've been unthinkable 5 years ago.

Plugged the thing in. Turned on the power. Waited 2 seconds. Ubuntu popped open a dialogue saying it had detected a new printer, and do I want to configure it ? I said yes, whereafter I had to confirm that A4 is my standard paper-format and yes, I do want this printer to be the "standard printer".

Connect. Click the mouse literally 3 times.

My grandmother could do that. We've come a long way.

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Samsung Warning

Posted Jan 11, 2007 19:04 UTC (Thu) by ccyoung (guest, #16340) [Link] (1 responses)

from my experience do not install the Samsung software from the CD.

Samsung Warning

Posted Jan 15, 2007 17:41 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Indeed. It's closed-source and rather more than slightly broken (at least the software for the ML-2250 is). Using the pclmono means I lose the ability to produce 1200dpi output, but 600dpi is more than enough for me right now anyway.

Hardware that Just Works

Posted Jan 12, 2007 1:57 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

That's good, but if all it does is come with binary drivers that happen to work on some particular Linux systems, then it's really only scratching the surface of supporting Linux.

Supporting Linux means open source drivers and/or protocol documentation are available.

Hardware that Just Works

Posted Jan 15, 2007 13:23 UTC (Mon) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

I don't think you read that properly. If Ubuntu just worked out of the
box (as well as some other distributions, apparently), the drivers are
not only free software but also included in the popular distributions.
That's good.