Re: [gentoo-user] Buying a low-cost printer for Linux

[Paul Hartman]

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 9:44 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> wrote:
> Does anyone have a good way of figuring out what printers that you can
> actually buy in the retail market place actually have support in
> Linux? I sure don't.
>
> Over the past 10 years I've gone the route of looking at the ads,
> finding printers in the right price range and then looking at
> http://www.linuxprinting.org to determine if there is any support.
> Invariably what comes up is that printer life in the retail chain is
> so short that whatever Fry's is selling is too new so Cups doesn't
> have support, and by the time Cups does have support the printer is no
> longer for sale. No better shopping through NewEgg or Amazon, etc. as
> I run into the same problem...
>
> What's a guy to do? My folks need a new unit. (I guess!) It's not
> working anymore as it's always been an unsupported model as far as I
> can tell. It's a Canon MP310. I had it working a year ago with the
> MP150 driver but it no longer works with recent Cups releases so
> either it broke or it's truly unsupported now. I may have to go back
> to some old Cups release but we'd like to find a unit that's really
> supported if possible. My market is West Coast California or U.S.
> online sales.
>
> Anyway, how does one go about really finding a sub-$100 home ink-jet
> type printer that has Linux support?
>
> Thanks,
> Mark

It's not an ink-jet but I got an HP LaserJet 1020 for $80 on NewEgg a
year ago and it works fine in Linux with CUPS using the foo2zjs
driver.

I think Googling is probably your best chance of finding out what
works and what doesn't. Also going with older models will probably be
cheaper and easier to find info about.

On NewEgg what I have found useful is to use their review search to
look for the word "linux" within the reviews of an item to see if
anyone else has already tried it on the penguin. :)

Good luck,
Paul