Eric S. Raymond was right about CUPS some fourteen years ago, in his essay "The Luxury of Ignorance" (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html), and things really haven't gotten any better. Here's an update since I last posted about six weeks ago.
I had an HP LaserJet 1100a, which worked reasonably well until its internal
memory went bad. These things happen. So I got a more recent HP Pro 1102w
which is no end of trouble; I could print to it a bit, irregularly, but now
not at all -- everything seems to be configured properly but CUPS reports
"Waiting for printer to become available" and nothing I do, from writing
udev rules to rebooting, makes it available. So I bought another printer, a
Lexmark MS415dn, in part for its three-penguin rating [ = "works perfectly
with Linux"] on openprinting.org, but it does not work perfectly, spitting
out endless pages of gibberish when I sent it PDFs or PostScript files, to
the point where it prints only once out of every two or three attempts. I
won't go through all the details of what I've tried, but I have tried, and
tried, and tried.
More or less at my wit's end -- actually, I can see my wit's end receding
in the distance in the rear-view mirror -- and proving that I cannot learn
from experience, I'm considering buying something that should just work,
that is, of getting a monochrome single-function laser printer with embedded
PostScript to handle my needs, which, you'd think, would be a sufficiently
humble set of requirements. You'd think. If anyone on this list can recommend
such a beast, which can run reliably under Linux (specifically arch linux), I
would be almost shamefully greatful. Nearly as good would be cautions about
what to avoid. Thanks.
--
Peter King peter.k...@utoronto.ca
Department of Philosophy
170 St. George Street #521
The University of Toronto (416)-946-3170 ofc
Toronto, ON M5R 2M8
CANADA
http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/
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