4 ms·

Memories of a printer

16 points by mwcampbell 11y ago

smacktoward 11y ago
The original HP LaserJets were absolute tanks. (And priced like tanks, but still.) Like the author I'm looking at buying a new HP multifunction printer, but since HP has long since joined the stampede towards disposable junk I'm not as optimistic about its future lifespan. At least their Linux support is decent...
Animats 11y ago
I still have a LaserJet 5L, nearing 20 years old. It's on a USB to parallel converter. Those are still easily available for under $10. It's plugged into a Windows 7 machine, and the Ubuntu machine has it configured as a network printer, which works fine. In practice, I just don't print much any more.
asveikau 11y ago
Ever since I first set up a printer on Linux many years ago I thought Unix printing was awesome. In those days, before this current era where every mainstream print ui has some variant of "save PDF", it was a huge breath of fresh air to have an interface so simple as "pipe postscript into lpr". Once you got that part working you could pretty trivially set up samba to share it with Windows machines and not have to worry about the hideous world of Windows printer drivers. (For the rare occasion when I need to print I do that today on my home network, with OpenBSD running lpd and samba talking to OS X and Windows clients.) Recently I read on HN that in the 70s, formatting documents with troff and printing them provided the financial justification for Unix back then. I was not surprised. Unix philosophy and printing mix well together, probably not by accident.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  On that note, supposedly the reason that RMS started FSF and GNU was printer drivers. Where the previous printer had come with source code for the drivers, allowing RMS to implement an "out of paper" message directed to accounts with a document in the queue, the new printer didn't. And when the company that sold it proved unhelpful he got frustrated enough that he ended up formulating what was to become the four freedoms.

16 points by mwcampbell 11y ago

The original HP LaserJets were absolute tanks. (And priced like tanks, but still.) Like the author I'm looking at buying a new HP multifunction printer, but since HP has long since joined the stampede towards disposable junk I'm not as optimistic about its future lifespan. At least their Linux support is decent...

Animats 11y ago

I still have a LaserJet 5L, nearing 20 years old. It's on a USB to parallel converter. Those are still easily available for under $10. It's plugged into a Windows 7 machine, and the Ubuntu machine has it configured as a network printer, which works fine. In practice, I just don't print much any more.

asveikau 11y ago

Ever since I first set up a printer on Linux many years ago I thought Unix printing was awesome. In those days, before this current era where every mainstream print ui has some variant of "save PDF", it was a huge breath of fresh air to have an interface so simple as "pipe postscript into lpr". Once you got that part working you could pretty trivially set up samba to share it with Windows machines and not have to worry about the hideous world of Windows printer drivers. (For the rare occasion when I need to print I do that today on my home network, with OpenBSD running lpd and samba talking to OS X and Windows clients.) Recently I read on HN that in the 70s, formatting documents with troff and printing them provided the financial justification for Unix back then. I was not surprised. Unix philosophy and printing mix well together, probably not by accident.

digi_owl 11y ago
On that note, supposedly the reason that RMS started FSF and GNU was printer drivers. Where the previous printer had come with source code for the drivers, allowing RMS to implement an "out of paper" message directed to accounts with a document in the queue, the new printer didn't. And when the company that sold it proved unhelpful he got frustrated enough that he ended up formulating what was to become the four freedoms.