Public bug reported:
Hi sorry to report this as a bug - but I don't know any other way this
it has any chance of ever being resolved.
Firstly let me say that this is not a typical n00b rant - I have been a
Linux user at home for 6+ years and am well aware of all of the familiar
arguments concerning the need to apply pressure on manufacturers to
provide appropriate support - about the fact that it is very difficult
to make any progress without that support and so on - as well as the
generally eternally optimistic hope that somehow some day this situation
improve of it's own accord. However after 6 plus years of hearing the
same message - and with virtually no movement on behalf of any of the
major manufactures and despite an extremely supportive and vocal user
base - it seems clear that this issue has now become a major and
potentially insurmountable obstacle in preventing the wide scale
adoption of Linux on the desktop overall.
To explain a little about my own circumstances - for several years I
have worked for myself running a small telecommunications business -
which essentially involves traveling around the UK and Europe and
selling cut price telecommunications services to the travel and tourism
industry.
In any case, I always resisted installing Linux on my laptop - as there
were too many hurdles towards doing so - predominantly that managing
contacts and compatibility between different platforms was not always a
simple affair. However due to advances in other areas within the Linux
platform this situation has been considerably eased.
Nevertheless one major factor remains outstanding in preventing me from
adopting Linux as my full time mobile/portable operating system - and
that is printer support. One of the aspects of my job involves traveling
and meeting people in a diverse range of office type environments - with
an almost equally diverse range of printers and printing equipment. In
the past resolving incompatibility's between printing equipment and the
various laptops I have owned was largely inconsequential, as drivers for
the 'rival' operating system I was using at that time were readily
available - and for good measure I always made sure I had the most
common drivers installed for the brands of printers I encountered the
most. (Indeed I can't recall having done this a single time where I ever
really ran into any significant difficulty in this regard).
However I always had philosophical issues with the necessity involved in
using a proprietary operating system for the work that I do - and
leaving the office and using Linux as my home based operating system of
choice. So recently (and inspired by the purchase of a nice new fast
laptop), I decided to see if it was either possible, or practical to
ditch MS entirely.
However after installing Kubuntu 'edgy' 6.10 - it has become abundantly
clear that this is indeed not possible at all. I say this in light of
the experience of 3 days trying (and failing) to set up a network
printer (which is a Lexmark X1800) 'All in One' type combination of
scanner, photocopier and printer - of exactly the kind that it is not
uncommon for me to encounter in small office environments.
The reason this is significant is that despite early aspirations at the
beginning of the 1990's that one day we would all live in a 'paperless
society', the reality is that for legal and many other reasons the vast
majority of formal contractual and business type communications are
still conducted on paper. If I meet a client and we make an agreement,
that agreement invariably must be concluded on paper.
I am aware also that my own personal experience in this regard is far
from unique - as from the smallest of office environments, to the
largest of corporate and multi-national conglomerate businesses, all
business of any true and binding significance is still conducted on
paper.
This is significant for Linux also - in that without the large scale
adoption of Linux in the office and working environment, the hopes of a
great many Linux advocates everywhere that one day Linux may supplant
Microsoft as the dominant operating system of choice in the market at
large, would seem a potentially forlorn, misplaced and unrealistic
aspiration.
It is significant too in the sense that unless Linux is adopted in a
whole sale manner within these environments, then Linux as a desktop
operating system may always be restricted to being used by nothing more
than a relatively few home based enthusiasts.
If after 6 years of using Linux, even I can still struggle (and fail) to
get a basic printer configuration going - how is it reasonable to expect
an averagely skilled office worker to quickly and efficient configure
their laptops for fast printer and scanner access? No company in their
right mind could afford to allocate this kind of time to their workers -
and no worker in this environment should be expected to waste this kind
of time, attempting to do what in 2006 should be the most basic of all
possible tasks - which is simply to print out important documents and
communications for their employers.
There has been an assumption to date that 'if we build it, they will
come', with regard to Linux printer driver support. However even though
many of the main prerequisites are now in place, manufacturer support
for printers and among printer manufacturers in particular has made very
little progress whatsoever - nor is there any indication that this will
change at any point in the foreseeable future.
Unless somehow this situation is somehow resolved and is given the
highest possible priority (perhaps through some project to provide a
virtualised driver 'compatibility layer' of some kind), then it seems
clear that the objective of wide scale Linux adoption may already be
over before it has really had a chance to succeed.
Again I know all of the old arguments about such things being out of
developer's control etc - and I also know that some people are
unrealistically optimistic and vocal about these matters. However the
cold stark reality is that this situation has not improved, nor is it
likely as initially hoped that it might eventually resolve itself.
** Affects: Ubuntu
Importance: Undecided
Status: Unconfirmed
--
Linux Is not a Viable OS without robust and extensive printer driver support.
https://launchpad.net/bugs/75965
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