Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:16:26 -0600 (CST) From: Robert Bonomi <bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How to Research Availability of Print Drivers Message-ID: <201201260016.q0Q0GQRt028527@mail.r-bonomi.com> In-Reply-To: <1EFD2A72678E4EE8BC2BE49BBEA0339C@my.domain>
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"robert perry" <rperry1742@verizon.net> wrote; > > I intend to purchase a multifunction printer (including fax, scanner, & > copier) and return to utilizing the BSD operating systems. Early research > indicates that few printer manufacturers formally support the FreeBSD or > Unix operating systems but imply that drivers may still be available > elsewhere. In the past, I remember visiting certain websites that provided > links to drivers but have forgotten the address. Could someone refresh my > memory or provide an address that could help? I take it you don't mean; <http://www.google.com>; For the 'printer' side, look for something that supports a 'standard' printer _language_ -- preferably PostScript -- over a serial or parallel port, or the 'lpr/lpd' protocol over a network connection. *OR* look at the (limited!) list of 'winrinters' directly supported by Ghostscript. For faxing, look for something tht is 'Class2.0' (aka EIA/TIA 592) compliant. any standard fax software -- like 'hylafax' - will talk to it. For scanning, see the manpage for SANE(7). also <www.sane-project.org> The higher-end Brother MFP units pretty much work 'out of the box', for everything except scanning. Brother provides scanner driver binaries for SANE on Linux, and source-code for the adventurous. A quick persual indicates that a number of *nix varients are supported, including several *BSD varients (FreeBSD is not explicitly mentioned, unfortunately) It does not look like it would require 'linuxemulator' compilation. A quick attempt at './configure' indicated a need for some tweaking of pathnames or file location.
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