[ale] tipping point for desktop linux (actually does something easy with scanners)

[Jim Kinney]

Brother has been pretty consistent with their Linux support. They have a
few oddballs they don't have drivers for (label printers mainly) but their
laser printers and MFC systems seem to be well supported.

XSane is amazing! Once I removed the HPLIP stuff, I was able to use my HP
OfficeJet 4130 (networked MFC with a keyboard and scan to PDF) directly.
Then the magenta cartridge *sprung a leak *(brand new, HP brand, not a
refill) and ruined the entire print engine. Still working on a replacement
pump.

Scan to emailed PDF is wonderful!

On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 11:24 AM, Neal Rhodes <neal at mnopltd.com> wrote:

> **
> I had a weird new experience on Friday with linux.
>
> Our Brother MFC-440CN printer/scanner/copier had been refusing to talk to
> the XP workstation that it's been connected to for about 10 years.   No
> amount of fiddling was cajoling it into communicating.   We needed so scan
> something for our business license.
>
> In desperation, I thought I'd just see if I could do something with our
> Centos server to diagnose if the problem was the Scanner or the
> workstation.    I could ping the scanner.
>
> To my amazement, I just googled "brother linux scanner" and found
> Brother's website with Linux drivers, found the driver for the
> Redhat/Centos/Fedora/64 bit flavor, found coherent instructions, installed
> the driver, then used the Add/Remove software to install anything that said
> "scanner", and voila, Xsane came up, found the scanner, and produced a
> multipage PDF.    All within about 20 minutes.     And the directions
> didn't contradict itself, and it ...just worked.
>
> I don't know about anyone else's experience with Linux desktop
> functionality and vendor specific hardware, but I'm somewhat in shock it
> was that simple.
>
> Neal
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
*
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