Printers

[rgro]

I'm looking for a new printer. Is there a list of printers that support PCBSD? Where?

[Oko]

I'm looking for a new printer. Is there a list of printers that support PCBSD? Where?

Printingand scanning in Unix (PCBSD) and in Linux are almost the same apart of the fact that few manufacturers started putting low quality binary blob drivers for Linux. Those printers are win printers not worthy of buying anyway.


So you may look at

http://openprinting.org/printer_list.cgi

for supported printers


and

http://www.sane-project.org/cgi-bin/driver.pl

for supported scanners.


You should ask firstly what kind of printing do you want to do?
Lots of black and white academic printing, mixture of color and black and white for seldom printing like at home, photos or something else.
Generally speaking Laser Printers are much better value on the long run
unless you really use printers occasionally.


For group office printer I can really recommend Brother HL-5250DN monochromatic printer. With little bit luck the printer in U. S. can be bought for about $120-140.

It speaks IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) supported by CUPS the official spooling system of PC-BSD which means you can attach it directly to the network. It also speaks PostScript language which means that it does not need any driver.

I could attach the printer to my network and just send PS file to it and it will print.

In general just look for the printers that speak full PostScript language.

Linux Optra Class, HP Laser Jets but make sure you avoid the one that need
foo2zjs driver which is ported but of the very low quality reverse engineered driver. For instance Laser Jet 1005,1006, 1200 are really bad choice.

Brother HL class in generally good but not all speak full PostScript.
However most of them print perfectly with Ghostscript drivers
hl1250 or hl7x0.

Brother scanners on the another hand should be avoid by all means. There is a proprietary Linux driver brscan and brscan2 with hidden binary blob libraries.

Samsung Laser Printer which use open source SPLIX driver are very cheap and
very good quality.


I would avoid CANON unless you are buying printer which speaks PostScript
or which is supported by Gutenprint drivers.


Speaking of color laser jets the cheapest one on the U. S. market is one produced by Samsung that goes for about $200 but you would have to go with something for at least $300 to get Unix ready Color Laser Jet.


If you are looking for all-in-one inkjet devices the choice is between HP products supported by open source drivers HPLIP (both printing and scanning)

http://hplip.sourceforge.net/supported_ ... index.html

and

Epson All-in-one devices which are usually supported by Gutenprint drivers
for printing and SANE backhand for printing.


Epson flat bad scanners are by far the best choice when it comes to scanners. Make sure that they are listed for sane-backhands as most cheap models speak some proprietary language. You will need to spend at least
$200 to get good quality Unix ready scanner.



You could look your local Graiglist or Driftshops for scanners. I would not
buy used printer though as they have too many movable parts and are prone
to break quickly. Usually they come with no ink or tonner so they are just waist of monney.


Cheers,
OKO