Printers and Linux

[MarkA]

As me and Winged were discussing in another thread, I wonder why there is such a big problem with printers and Linux... many printers are not detected and supported by Linux.. is there a logical explanation for this?

[WingedPanther]

Sure, every device has a communication protocol that it follows. For example: to print an image on a printer, you will have to tell the printer what pixels to paint what colors. Depending on the printer, the instructions you have to send it will vary. Some old dot-matrix printers needed to be told to shift between text mode and graphics mode, for example, while modern printers essentially function in graphics mode at all times.

The precise codes are handled by the drivers (created by the manufacturers), which are generally made available for Mac and Windows, but are NOT always provided for Linux. Because creating a driver is different for each system, some manufacturers make the decision that providing a driver on Linux isn't worth the time their developers would spend creating it. As a result, no driver. It's then up to the Linux community to attempt to build drivers for those items, a VERY tedious process.

Some companies are better than others about providing assistance/drivers for their printers, but you really have to do some research before you buy, or you could get a very expensive paperweight. OpenPrinting - The Linux Foundation has a lot of additional resources for looking up and configuring printers.

[MarkA]

Hmm... ok. but then why does Linux detect many other devices? I mean, this huge problem seems to be with printers... with other devices it doesn't seem to be such a huge problem.

[Tor]

You can't use generic drivers on your EEE PC to get the lexmark to work?

[PenguinLover]

What difference is there between the actual drivers and the generic ones?

[MarkA]

I think it differs maybe in the printing quality and even the colors.. they might not be printed exactly... although I can't understand how they work! Because of all the codes and stuff like that that Winged mentioned...

[WingedPanther]

The lexmark refuses the work. If you think about something like a video card, there are two things in it's favor:
1) the VGA protocol is pretty universally supported and well documented. So getting basic functionality working is easy.
2) there aren't that many video cards on the market.

Compare that with a printer:
1) There are a variety of protocols for even CONNECTING to the printer (USB, Firewire, LPT, etc)
2) There is no standard for basic printer communication
3) There are thousands of different printers when you look at the major players
4) Microsoft loves to add new "functionality" for connecting devices that enables some very strange connection methods (maybe the printer is some funky "hard drive")

Even a company like HP, which is working to provide Linux support for its printers, has difficulty getting all its products supported on Linux.