[LUNI] Using (Debian) Unstable packages in Woody

[Martin Maney]

On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 01:40:41PM -0500, Robert C. Ramsdell wrote:
> Can moving from Lprng to Cups be any harder than trying to work with Lprng
> when I do not really understand it?  

I think the answer must be "certainly not!"  I'm not sure I've needed
to understand Cups all that much, yet it's working here.  :-)

> To put it another way, is the setup process with Cups likely to be enough
> simpler than with lprng to make up for the additional complication of
> changing printing systems entirely?

Cups is much nicer to work with than lpr*.  I'm not sure how it
compares in start-up effort, but... let me put it this way: I'm
switching over to Cups at least for the home LAN.  At the lab I need to
coax print jobs to slip into the Netware queue, and there the lprNG
that's already been working for several years seems likely to beat out
learning how to make Cups do that... or not, but it works so I'm not
looking for good, rational reasons to change it.  :-)

> I own an HP OfficeJet K60xi.  The proper drivers for this printer are not
> available in Woody, so for som time now I've put up with decent printing of
> text, poor printing from kde apps and mozilla, and terrible printing of
> images.

I feel your pain.  I have always liked the quiet competence of HP
inkjets, starting with the original Deskjet [no model number, there's
only this one, bub].  I've also avoided them because for years they had
piss-poor Linux support.  Not that inkjets are among the most
interoperable devices in general, but HP's attitude towards Linux
support used to just suck.

I got a hand-me-down BubbleJet 6xx (610?) that needed cleaning and ink,
and it's amazing how good a job it does on photos on plain bond with
the gamma set to compensate for the quite nonlinear density
characteristic.  Photo quality this ain't, but considering the printer,
media, and about ten minutes fiddling with settings through Cups, it's
not bad.  What will happen with your K60xi, who knows?

BTW, the Debian Cups install leaves the server open only to localhost,
I think.  Secure, but annoying if you want to use the printer on one
machine from the rest of the LAN.  Of course it's just a config
setting...

-- 
To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes
is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought 
is not worth publishing.  -- Maria Mitchell