so what color photo printers are supported in Linux?   My personal color
printer at home is the Canon i9900, which is connected via USB2 to a
WindowsXP system, I don't have much experience trying to do photo
printing from Linux, in fact the last time I did any color printing from
Unix or Linux, it was on a color Postscript laser printer, and it was
nowheres near photo quality.

ditto, multifunction SOHO copier/printer/fax/scanner machines (which is
what I'm presuming the MP160 is).  Those typically are 90% host
software, and require all-in-one application software running on the
host system to manage their copier and fax functionality.     How would
you propose a consumer electronics oriented company support Linux?
Which glibc should they link with?  which version of gnome/gtk/kde/what
should they build their app with?    just give the user a source tarball
and say 'have fun compiling'?

That's an interesting point, but it's sad, too, because it makes Linux the limping straggler following behind the great M$ iron horse Window$. Or is there an alternative for Linux that does print photo-quality photo images?

Would it be so difficult to send the source to the major distributors (RH, SUSE, to name two) so they could include quality printer support in the distros? (Yeah, I know, more work for the distro developers, but that IS the business they're in....)

mhr