Open source driver - Windows XP

[Amedee Van Gasse]

On 19-06-10 16:55, Michael wrote:
> I bought an HP 6110 printer/scanner from the thrift store in excellent
> condition and it works fine with the Ubuntu drivers.  I took it to a
> friends house so that he could use the scanner.  We ended having to
> download the driver (he uses XP) from the HP website - a 34 meg file.
> This seems rather large to me for some reason.  (I am not really tech
> savvy - I am more of an end user.)
>
> a) is this a "normal" size file for a driver?
>
> b) are the Linux open source drivers the same or comparable in size?
>
> c) are there open source HP drivers for XP?  (I've googled "open source
> HP drivers" but all  I get are Linux drivers under open source
>
> Thanks for any of y'alls input and comments.
>
> Michael
>

The Windows driver itself is comparable in size.
However you usually don't get to choose what you can install. Like 
others said, the drivers come with additional software that you will 
never use.

What I often do, after I download the huge zip file, is extract it and 
examine it very carefully. I look for directories with .inf files. These 
are the files that Windows needs to install a new driver. They reference 
a few other files, usually some binary library blobs. All together it's 
never more than a few hundred kilobytes. But you do this at your own 
risk. If you break Windows by installing drivers manually, you get to 
keep the pieces.

-- 
Amedee