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

[Boris Borisov]

I wish all hardware vendors were that prompt with their drivers. The
world will be betters place. Or maybe that is how they stimulate
driver hackers :)

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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