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1990

SELL LINUX COMPATIBLE PRINTERS

1990 points posted to Linux, Printers and Ink by nycnikato 05/27/07

Right now DEll sells rebranded Lexmark printers. I bought and A920 later to find out that it is very very poorly supported on Linux, and also does not support Macintosh. Most Lexmark/DEll printers for home/soho use are not well supported under Linux. Here are some ideas to fix that, in order of preference

1) Sell Rebranded BROTHER printers, Virtually ALL of brother's printers and multifunctions support Linux (and Mac), they have open source binaries and source code that you could include with ubuntu or any other

http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/cups_drivers.html< there is no bad blood or competition between brother and DELL
Brother printers are very very inexpensive, so there is room for margin. Surely brother would manufacture custom cartridges for dell.

2) Compel Lexmark to make their printers Linux compatible. This is unlikely because Lexmark likes to be proprietary with drivers. For some reason it is difficult technologically for Lexmark to produce Linux drivers. There is no processor inside their printers. Brother, HP, Samsung, and others do not have this problem.

3) Sell Rebranded HP printers---- Not so good because HP makes all the money, and DELL directly fuels a competitor.

mistern
05/27/07		 They say: "Buy a Dell Postscript printer for Linux" - so probably those will work?! (I'm happy with my HP LaserJet 1300.)
nycnikato
05/27/07		 Have you seen the Dell postscript printers, they look terrible, weigh around 50 pounds, have no style, and are not multifunction.
mistern
05/27/07		 There are non-Dell postscript printers.
nycnikato
05/28/07		 Dell does not care about selling other brands. They want their own brand so they can make residuals off of ink. They foolishly went with Lexmark, and now they are paying the price.
dmitri
05/29/07		 I have a Lexmark X2470 and I'm forced to reboot into Windows every time I need to print something!
When I'm going to delete Windows (which I'm planning to do), Lexmark printer will be pretty much useless to me... I'll prolly try to exchange it with someone who has Linux-friendly printer then..

Anyhow, if I don't find anyone, I'd like to be able to buy one :).
nycnikato
07/24/07		 Merged Idea originally posted 05/26/07
SELL LINUX COMPATIBLE PRINTERS

Right now DEll sells rebranded Lexmark printers. I bought and A920 later to find out that it is very very poorly supported on linux, and also does not support macintosh. Most Lexmark/DEll printers for home/soho use are not well supported under linux. Here are some ideas to fix that, in order of preference

1)Sell REbranded BROTHER printers, Virtually ALL of brother's printers and multifunctions support Linux (and Mac), they have opensource binaries and sourcecode that you could include with ubuntu or any other distro.

http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/cups_drivers.html

Also there is no bad blood or competition between brother and DELL
Brother printers are very very inexpensive, so there is room for margin. Surely brother would manufacture custom cartridges for dell.

2)Compel lexmart to make their printers linux compatible. This is unlikely becasue lexmark likes to be proprietary with drivers. For some reason it is difficult technologically for Lexmark to prodice Linux drivers. There is no processor inside their printers. Brother, HP, Samsung, and others do not have this problem.

3) Sell Rebranded HP printers---- Not so good because HP makes all the money, and DELL directly fules a competitior.
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