printers for UBUNTU?

[Brian McKee]

>> At the risk of defending Lexmark - they're network printers are most
>> certainly compatible as most of them do Postscript and IPP natively
>> (along with many other standards, e.g. IBM mainframe stuff etc etc).
>>
>> I'm disappointed they stopped putting out CUPS ppd files for some
>> reason and instead came up with their own 'custom' printing
>> application - but it's most certainly linux compatible (albeit clunky
>> and ugly)
>>
>> Me, I take the Win2K PPD files, dump 'em in CUPS and they work top drawer.

> I'm wondering if you could elaborate on "dump 'em in CUPS" some for me,
> as I have a Lexmark Z845 printer that I cannot find a driver for,, and
> have just been looking at the ppd file in the /Windows/Driver Cache/i386
> folder, but do not know what to do with the file or files there in
> Ubuntu CUPS.

I don't think it'll work with that one Ray.   Note I mentioned
'network printers.'
By that I meant printers that understand Postscript and/or PCL.
 The PPD file was originally a Postscript Printer Definition file or
something like that,
and since CUPS speaks postscript the PPD file is directly useable.  If
you use the web interface to CUPS
(http://localhost:631) to set up the printer one of the steps allows
you to upload your own PPD file.
You can also just stick 'em in /usr/share/ppd/ and reload CUPS,
then those drivers will be available during a regular install.

> I don't think that I've ever seen a Lexmark network printer, and I was
> in the market for a network printer recently. At least in my nation,
> they are not marketed.

>> I'm disappointed they stopped putting out CUPS ppd files for some
>> reason and instead came up with their own 'custom' printing
>> application - but it's most certainly linux compatible (albeit clunky
>> and ugly)

>> Me, I take the Win2K PPD files, dump 'em in CUPS and they work top drawer.

> I've never even thought of that, nice! Can you get that off the driver
> disk? How does that handle special functions, like dual-sided
> printing?

The Lexmark 'T' series laser printer is pretty common around here -
lots of chain operations
like Canadian Tire, the local school board, the Honda dealer all have
them.  They're pretty
solid units actually.

You can pull the Win2K driver from the driver CDs.  It works great,
and sets up options for
print quality, trays, double sided all that stuff nicely.  Anything
that isn't there (toner levels, maintenance reports)
are available thru it's built in web interface anyway.  Heck, you can
ftp or telnet into them too :-)

> I had at one time strong reason to believe Dell laser network printers
> were rebranded lexmarks, but I don't remember why I had drawn that
> conclusion awhile back...maybe someone else would know if it's true.

I would bet it was true some of the time - I know some of them are
relabelled HP units, and I can't see why they'd be brand loyal.
Heck, I've got some IBM laser printers here that are relabelled
Samsung units, and that was when they owned Lexmark.
Unless they are OEM (and sometimes even then) they all rebrand things.

Brian