Re: Linux on the desktop
On the other hand, there are standards for printers (Postscript, PCL etc), you're doing yourself a disservice if you buy a proprietary printer instead of one that supports one of these standards.
Son, every single one of my printers supports Postscript 3 or PCL 5 or 6 or both PS and PCL. usually both. It ain't the basic drivers that's the problem, it's the extras. It's the stuff which was the reason why I bought the printer: playing with colours, playing with page settings, playing with special output. The things not supported by basic drivers. Sure, I can print a nice plain page of text from a Linux machine on my trusty Brother colour laser. I can even print basic colour documents. If I want to do something special, something which demands special handling, the Brother can't do it from Linux... but can from Windows or Mac. I could print to PostScript and screw with the PS file and then send that to the printer from Linux, but why would I do that when I can get exactly what I want, with no special messing about, from Mac or Windows?
on a similar note, yes, I can do basic scanning, again to Brother devices, from Linux... but to do the fancy stuff, I need to go to Mac or Windows, using the exact same device, because those features are simply not available for the devices I use under Linux. They may well be available for other devices, but the ones I have work and I'm not going to junk them to move to Linux.
YMMV.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
