Antoine Jacoutot wrote: >On Mon, Apr 08, 2013 at 09:10:18PM +0200, Erwin Geerdink wrote: >> Hi, >> >> Recently I obtained a Canon Pixma MP230 printer/scanner which I can't >> get to work on my OpenBSD box. OpenBSD recognizes the device (w/ >kernel >> ulpt device disabled), however: >> >> - There is no cups/foomatic driver for this specific model. I tried >> the MP220 and MP240 ppd drivers but they don't work (the device >> indicator light blinks twice, which means 'no paper in tray', which >> is obviously not the case) >> >> - Canon provides IJ printer drivers for Linux (source). Simply using >> the included ppd file results in an error: "File >> "/usr/local/libexec/cups/filter/pstocanonij" not available: No such >> file or directory" >> Clearly, the linux drivers need to be built but this also results in >> errors. Unfortunately, I do not have the programming/porting >> skills to solve this problem. >> >> Does anyone know how to get this device work? > >Canon is one of the worst brand when it comes to opensource. >pstocanonij might just be a wrapper which you can get from a linux rpm >and tweak to \ >make it work (I had luck doing that using some linux driver for >unsupported Brother \ >printers) -- or it might just be a linux-only binary blob in which case, >there's not \ >much hope. > >When it comes to printing/scanning, I would get the hell away from Canon >and Brother \ >-- there are the worst by far. They support Linux the same way NVidia >does for its \ >graphic chips...
You just got the answer from the man who is responsible for the fact that OpenBSD has up-to-date port of sane-backends, foomatic-filters, hplip, and pretty much any opensource printer driver under the Sun. Together with people like Matthias Kilian who is maintainer of the Ghostscript and slue of other useful desktop related ports, former developer Jacob Meuser who has disappeared from this mailing list few years ago (Jake I hope you are OK where ever you are now. We remember when you ported Ghostscript to OpenBSD) they managed to enable OpenBSD to work with pretty much any common desktop related hardware. However, I do believe that we as users owe them to educate ourself about the thins as PostScript, Printer Command Language(PCL), LPD protocol, IPP protocol and similar things. You will do a great favor to yourself if you get a decent printer which speaks PostScript or at least (PCL5) or some of network protocols. The same goes for a scanner that can scan directly to a USB or SD card and requires no drivers or just a really good Epson scanner. As of Canon Pixma series it is probably not worthy time it took me to write this e-mail. I can't speak of Canon but as of Brother I can say that their better laser printers (HL-5450DN and above) are excellent and can be just plugged and used on the OpenBSD (they speak PostScript, PCL5 or some of network protocols). However, I am avoiding them as they have relative higher price per page than Xerox or DeLL(rebranded Lexmark) printers which I use. They also use more electricity. I do not know your location but in the U.S. you can buy a decent used DeLL/Lexmark printer with less than 2000 pages on the drum for less than $50. Best, Predrag
