“Not too long ago I treated myself to a HP 3050 multi-function
laser printer with fax, scanner, and copier. I almost went with
Samsung because it makes good machines, and all of its monochrome
printers have Linux drivers. But they are closed, proprietary
binary drivers which are bad enough on their own: big fat pains to
install and upgrade. And then the news broke about the ingenious
security holes and inexplicable permissions changes on key
directories introduced by the amusingly awful installer for the
Samsung drivers, and that was all she wrote. HP, on the other hand,
supports good-quality, well-supported genuine FOSS drivers, HPLIP,
which we introduced ourselves to last week.“A number of Samsung printers are supported by CUPS, but a lot
of them aren’t, and I want to send my hard-earned money to vendors
who are serious about supporting Linux users. A common problem with
multi-function printers is that some parts work in Linux, and some
parts don’t. Or you have to pull all the pieces together yourself,
instead of having a nice unified management console like
hp-toolbox. Game, set, and match to HP…”
Related Story:
Give
Your Networked HP Printers HPLIP(Aug 14, 2007)