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Which scanner and printer should I buy?

From das due

Answered By Karl-Heinz Herrmann, Heather Stern

Help me please, I'm quite desesperate! I'm looking for a scanner and a printer that I can buy in french and which was supported by linux mandrake 7.2.

[K.H.] Hi!

I'm not french but from Germany. I don't think the available hardware is that big a difference between France and Germany, but anyway I can't talk about the french market.

That said, I would suggest a look at:

http://www.linuxprinting.org

There you can look up any printer you found in shops and want to know it's status with Linux, or you look on the list by manufacturer to get a picture of whats working in Linux.

A list of suggested printers (by the author of that website):

http://www.linuxprinting.org/suggested.html

All printers supporting postscript Level 2 (or 3) will work right out of the box as long as the interface is supported with that particular printer -- USB could be a problem. Look at www.linux-usb.org for the actual status of USB and some specific printer.

Also most printing on non-postscript printers is done by ghostscript, a postscript interpreter available on all Linux distribution I know of. To see which printers are supported by ghostscript have a look at the printing adress above or ghostscript directly: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost (or www.ghostscript.org for news and links).

Moreover if it can be in near than the price of the officejet G55 it will be mervelous!

[K.H.] I don't knot that officejet or the price, so I'm not sure what price class we are talking about. But I know that low end Epson and HP printers usually work to some degree, because both have their "family language" (HP: PCL and Epson: ESC/P) which is the same or at least very similar from printer to printer of the same manufacturer.

anyway, the status of the officejet G55 on:

http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=421842

is "partially supported" printing and scanning seems to work, so not in perfect quality.

I myself have a low cost Ink printer from Epson and since a little while a laser from Lexmark (postscript capable). I'm very happy with that one. Most lexmark printers know the PCL language as well, so the ghostscript print drivers for HP PCL printers usually work too.

One last advice maybe: Stay away from anything saying winprinter or GDI printer. These will most probably not work since you need a windows program as printer driver.

[Heather] Actually a linux program does exist to support several of these - but, they're all mentioned at Linuxprinting.Org, so, if you see a "winprinter" or "GDI" or (here's the other name) "PPA" printer and it's not listed, don't rush to spend money on it.

Seeing "Additional" Memory

More background on using Linux with > 64MB RAM

From tag

Answered By The Linux Gazette Answer Gang

I have two very old server (proliant 1500,4500). I know how to configure memory in lilo for earlier version of redhat, but 7.1 won't install and I am trying desperately to modify my boot disk to make it aware of the additional memory. Please help.

Thank You David L Revor

[] Actually it is the kernel that's responsible for "seeing" your memory. LILO is just the loader. However it was commonly necessary (for earlier kernels) to pass the kernel a hint about any memory beyond 64Mb. There wasn't a standard (on older machines) for detecting memory beyond that point (a limitation of the INT 0x12h handler on the traditional BIOS).

Newer kernels incorporate better memory detection tricks, which work on most PCs. However, there are probably some systems on which automatic memory detection is still not reliable. So we still have the mem= option to the Linux kernel, so that we can specify the amount that we know we have. (This option is also handy for programmers and software QA people, for testing their applications in reduced memory situations without having to physically remove RAM from their systems).

Seeing "Additional" Memory

From Bob Martin

Answered By tag

The Linux Gazette Answer Gang wrote:

I have two very old server (proliant 1500,4500). I know how to configure memory in lilo for earlier version of redhat, but 7.1 won't install and I am trying desperately to modify my boot disk to make it aware of the additional memory. Please help.

Thank You David L Revor

Actually it is the kernel that's responsible for "seeing" your memory. LILO is just the loader. However it was commonly necessary (for earlier kernels) to pass the kernel a hint about any memory beyond 64Mb. There wasn't a standard (on older machines) for detecting memory beyond that point (a limitation of the INT 0x12h handler on the traditional BIOS).

Newer kernels incorporate better memory detection tricks, which work on most PCs. However, there are probably some systems on which automatic memory detection is still not reliable. So we still have the mem= option to the Linux kernel, so that we can specify the amount that we know we have. (This option is also handy for programmers and software QA people, for testing their applications in reduced memory situations without having to physically remove RAM from their systems).

[Bob] A lot depends on the BIOS. With boards using AWARD I have had no problems at all with >64MB. With AMI, I found the disabling the power management in the BIOS will allow >64MB to be found, turn back on the memory is stuck at 64MB. --

Bob Martin

This page edited and maintained by the Editors of Linux Gazette Copyright © 2001
Published in issue 67 of Linux Gazette June 2001

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