[ale] tipping point for desktop linux (actually does something easy with scanners)

[JD]

I've had good luck with my Brother MFC as well and bought a cheap Brother laser
printer for Mom's Linux box, both devices work perfectly.

If you are scanning, then you might want img cleanup, OCR, and PDF output too -
gscan2pdf makes that pretty simple.

I've also had good luck with cheap Samsung printers.

Last, since I stopped using inkjets, my printing costs have dropped to almost
nothing and the laser toner never seems to dry up right before tax season. ;)
Laser printers are much, much, much more economical. I suspect the color lasers
are cheaper than color inkjets too.

On 01/21/2013 12:07 PM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> Brother has been pretty consistent with their Linux support. They have a few
> oddballs they don't have drivers for (label printers mainly) but their laser
> printers and MFC systems seem to be well supported.
> 
> XSane is amazing! Once I removed the HPLIP stuff, I was able to use my HP
> OfficeJet 4130 (networked MFC with a keyboard and scan to PDF) directly. Then
> the magenta cartridge _sprung a leak _(brand new, HP brand, not a refill) and
> ruined the entire print engine. Still working on a replacement pump.
> 
> Scan to emailed PDF is wonderful!
> 
> On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 11:24 AM, Neal Rhodes <neal at mnopltd.com
> <mailto:neal at mnopltd.com>> wrote:
> 
>     __
>     I had a weird new experience on Friday with linux.
> 
>     Our Brother MFC-440CN printer/scanner/copier had been refusing to talk to
>     the XP workstation that it's been connected to for about 10 years.   No
>     amount of fiddling was cajoling it into communicating.   We needed so scan
>     something for our business license.
> 
>     In desperation, I thought I'd just see if I could do something with our
>     Centos server to diagnose if the problem was the Scanner or the
>     workstation.    I could ping the scanner.
> 
>     To my amazement, I just googled "brother linux scanner" and found Brother's
>     website with Linux drivers, found the driver for the Redhat/Centos/Fedora/64
>     bit flavor, found coherent instructions, installed the driver, then used the
>     Add/Remove software to install anything that said "scanner", and voila,
>     Xsane came up, found the scanner, and produced a multipage PDF.    All
>     within about 20 minutes.     And the directions didn't contradict itself,
>     and it ...just worked.
> 
>     I don't know about anyone else's experience with Linux desktop functionality
>     and vendor specific hardware, but I'm somewhat in shock it was that simple.
>