Chapter 14. Additional hardware

Table of Contents

Lexmark Z65
CanoScan LiDE 30
Acer Bluetooth Dongle BT-600
Canon digital IXUS IIs
Logitech USB Mouse MX310

Here is my experience with some other pieces of hardware I use together with my notebook.

Summary: Getting things to work on Linux isn't problematic in the most cases. There is plenty of help in the form of mailing lists and forums out there, and many problems have already been solved.

A growing number (but still too few) hardware producers support Linux, some tell they will in the near future, and others (very bad example: Canon) tell they haven't any drivers, and won't produce some in the near future. Please avoid buying products of this vendors, or at least nerve them with emails asking for Linux support. They can't ignore us forever.

Lexmark Z65

This tool is a printer convenient for printing normal text and photos as well. Main problem was to get the right driver, as Cups doesn't have it by default.

Lexmark's US website provides some drivers for SuSE/Redhat 7.x, but they aren't really helpful as they don't work. Maybe it has something to do with the POSIX change problem, but who cares.

All you need is the "Z65.ppd" which is packed in the installer. After copying it from /tmp/... while the installation program is crashing, you can use the KDE printer manager to import the file while doing a new printer install. That's all, works without problems.

Note

Before the Linux driver had been released I emailed the (german) Lexmark support: They should provide a driver or exchange the printer with a one which is supported on Linux. They agreed to exchange it; but (un?)fortunately I found the driver on their US website and didn't need to send the printer. Anyway, it was a honest offer.

Note

I would not recommend to buy any printer from Lexmark. They are a pain in the Popo to set up and get them working. Take an Epson instead.