[Wiltshire] Linux laser printers?

[David Fletcher]

On Thu, 2013-01-03 at 10:39 +0000, Richard Reynolds wrote:
> Samsung have their own linux drivers/installers called samsung unified
> drivers:

> http://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/

> Its horrible non-open source nature aside you will get better
> quality/color using those drvers. Also it allows the scanner functions
> to work if you have a multi-function printer (Which I do).

After much deliberation I bought a Brother HL-3040CN.

There's two .deb driver packages for CUPS available which have to be
installed in sequence and may or may not "just work". rpm packages are
also available. AFAICT it's more likely to work immediately if using
USB, but I've concluded that it's best to install the drivers, then use
the CUPS web server administration tool to delete the resulting queue
and reinstate it manually using the ppd file that comes as part of the
package from Brother. Unfortunately you can't just use the ppd - it
refers to other files that get installed elsewhere.

So, it's now working as I wanted it to i.e. anything on the network can
use the printer by sending jobs to the CUPS queue on the server.

It's connected to my network with a fixed IP address rather than USB. I
think I could use the USB socket without problems but the network
connection lets me get into the printer configuration with a web browser
so that's probably how it will stay connected. For anybody who needs to
use one of these on a network but prevent users from going direct to the
printer rather than via the server to "jump the queue" there's a
firewall type facility on the printer that can be used to make it only
listen to certain IP addresses.

And, yes, the printer says that it also works with IPv6 but wonderful
Virgin Media still reckon they have plenty of IPv4 addresses so nobody
seems to know when we'll start to get a modern service from them.

Conclusion:- I can recommend this printer so long as you don't want to
print graphics from Gimp with it. I'm trying to get the relevant parties
talking to each other to get it added to Gutenprint but won't hold my
breath. I don't want to print photos on it anyway - I've concluded that
it's better to just go to Asda Walmart and let them do it. I needed to
print some pdf documents that included photos and they worked absolutely
fine. I posted all my notes about setting up the printer on the little
headless server that some of you have seen on the Ubuntu list. The
technical support department at Brother also has this information.

Dave