On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 8:52 AM, Ron Loftin reloftin@twcny.rr.com wrote:
Since my old Epson C86 has finally managed to clog up the print heads, I'm in the market for a replacement. I'd like to know what the people on this list are using for printers that are currently available, since we are using versions of CUPS and foomatic that are frozen, and any other issues or "gotchas" that you are aware of.
For the replacement printer, I'm considering a color laser printer instead of the inkjets that I've been using, and I'm dithering back and forth over the question of direct-connect or networked printer. Suggestions, warnings, and horror stories are welcome.
I've just had adventures with various HP printers. In the "work great with Ubuntu linux and sorta well with RedHat/Centos" I have the higher end HP printers like the desktop model HP2015d. I use usb connector on that one. That's black and white with duplexing. Very convenient. Also I have a new HP4014n in a computer lab--that is black and white with a jet direct card. On Ubuntu systems, the printer configurator is somehow smarter than on the RedHat/Fedora/CentOS systems. Ubuntu systems are able to see the printer, know automatically its type and get the desired drivers. No problem. On the RedHat variants, more manual configuration is necessary, but they do work once you get the settings correct. I end up using the CUPS configurator in the web browser on RedHat systems, the system-config-printer thing almost never gets it correct.
My experience has been that any HP system that promises to support postscript will work fine, whether with USB cable or Jet Direct card.
I have had an absolutely horrible experience with HP1018. It is a non-postscript printer that HP sells now. It has a print driver system that reminds me quite a bit of the old "win modems" that appeared in 1993 or so. I recall it was called the "Zj stream protocol" or something like that. It is supposed to work with hplip and some special drivers & firmware, but it is very unstable for us. After wrestling with drivers a lot, I contacted their support and the man said to me "we don't even make that, some Chinese company slaps those together and we sell them to compete in the lowest part of the market. You get what you pay for." A secretary ordered some because they are windows compatible. But they are really windows only. At all costs, avoid HP1018 or any HP device that does not support postscript protocol.
I googled a bit to recover some memories. It reminded me how awful this was. Some people seem to say they have got it working (but I'm not believing it).
http://brange.wordpress.com/2008/06/14/installing-hp-laserjet-1018-in-ubuntu...
Here's the part that killed me. "The HP LaserJets 100, 1005, 1018, and 1020 need to have their firmware loaded every time they are powered on." (http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/MacOSX/foo2zjs)
I could get the printer set up for the users, but then somebody would power everything down and no thing would work any more. Root privileges were required to run the hp setup thing that could re-download the firmware.
HP makes this difficult because they seem to change model numbers every week. The 1018 is not offered now, but they do have 1005 and 1006. As far as I can tell now, the ones to avoid are the ones that have this in the spec sheet
Language: Host based.
That means it is the windows firmware approach.
On the other hand, when they say this (as does P4015 series):
Languages HP PCL 6, HP PCL 5e, HP postscript level 3 emulation, direct PDF (v1.4) printing (192 MB printer memory recommended)
then you are OK.