Re: a printer for Linux
On Sat, May 05, 2001 at 11:09:38AM -0700, Ron Farrer wrote:
> Glenn Becker (glenn@icarus.usanetworks.com) wrote:
>
> > As you can tell, I'm utterly clueless - what kind of a printer should I
> > get? I'll be printing mainly formatted text documents (whether formatted
> > in something like Abiword or something else, I haven't decided).
> >
> > Will any PC-compatible printer do? What are the considerations, here?
>
> Well there are basically two main types of printers: postscript and
> non-postscript. IMO true postscript printers are FAR too expensive and
> don't provide much for quality of the output. So that leaves
> non-postscript prints, for me at least. I narrowed my choices down to
> ink-jet because they provide a good price, performance, qualtiy
> combo. Since I was not getting a true postscript printer I needed to
> use ghostscript to convert postscript output into something the
> printer could understand. So I visited the ghostscript home page and
> looked throught the list of supported printers. After comparing each
> of these printers I finally decided on an Epson Stylus Color 900. I
> used ghostscript 5.10 package plus the gimp-print drivers
> (creating a gs-stp package version 5.10-9.1) which works very well.
>
> HTH,
> Ron
This is awfully misleading information. In general, there are two
types of printers: lasers and inkjets. An inkjet printer is cheaper
is generally cheaper and can't process postcript natively. However,
their cost per page is usually very high--orders of magnitude higher
than a laser. If you plan to print fairly often, there is no question
you should get a laser.
Most lasers, except for low end models, support postscript. This
automatically means that it will be perfectly supported under Linux or
any other virtually any other operating system with minimal effort.
They also have much better output and speed compared to inkjets. And,
they are generally much more rugged--inkjets, in my experience, break
all the time.
Probably the only significant advantage of an inkjet is color
printing. Most inkjets will do a decent job at printing in color at
far lower (initial) costs than a color laser.
You will most likely have the best linux experience with a postscript
laser. Unless, of course, you're on a very tight budget, don't plan
to print a lot, and need color printing.
If you do choose an inkjet, be wary of driver support. Most inkjets
have pretty lousy support in linux.
--
Brian Nelson <nelson@bignachos.com>
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