[Wiltshire] Linux laser printers?

[David Fletcher]

On Thu, 2013-01-03 at 00:53 +0000, Kevin Milburn wrote:

> As for the other makes,  you may have to locate the PPD files manually!
> 
> Kevin
> 

Please bear with me here, I'm putting down my thoughts and
investigations, hoping to find something that works and maybe assist
others at the same time.

It's starting to look to me like Brother is trying to be helpful. A
Google search got me to this page:-
http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/download_prn.html
where for instance, the HL-3040CN has an entry.

Now, how to use the driver? I have my printer plugged into a USB outlet
on a low power, dedicated server so that any computer on the network can
use it. This works beautifully with my old Stylus Photo 950, which is
listed by the Add Printer facility in the CUPS web interface
(http://hostaddress:631). I think, from my previous frustrating
investigations, I would find that the HL-3040CN would not be listed
here, BUT, there is an option to supply a ppd file.

Something I've not tried before is to download the cupswrapper .deb file
for the printer from the above site, then right-click on it in Nautilus,
choose the Extract Here option, then navigate down through the resulting
directories. Here, I find the file brother_hl3040cn_printer_en.ppd. Can
I copy this file to the server and use it to add the printer to the CUPS
configuration?

If I were to take the .deb file and install it in the usual manner on a
desktop/netbook, would Gimp-Gutenprint then know how to drive the
printer? I can try this with the netbook - I'm not so worried about
messing with it as the desktop machine.

Getting there, maybe.

Dave