[PLUG] Laser printer cartridge compatibility

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 3 Sep 2018, King Beowulf wrote:

> You may want to poke around gutenprint (included in Slackware) first to
> locate printers with CUPS ppd drivers already built in to save time
> wrestling with .deb/.rpm driver files:
> http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/p_Supported_Printers.php
> and also here for info and caveats on proprietary drivers:
> http://www.openprinting.org/drivers
>
> I've had good luck with HP printers and HPLIP - most of HP printers use
> F/OSS drivers with some multifunction exceptions (plugin for scanning).
> Color, of course, boosts the toner price by a bit and the draconian
> "genuine" crapola is annoying.

Ed,

   I've had several HP printers and they all 'just worked' with linux. My
issue with the HP color laserjet is that it will not work with a non-HP
refilled toner cartridge; at least, not with the ones I bought. The
monochrome LJ5 works perfectly with the Cartridge World refurbished
cartridge, but not the 2550C.

   Looking on the web I learned that there are several vendors who sell
guaranteed-to-work toner cartridges for the Dell c1670nw printer. And,
apparently the 4-cartridge set Amazon sells for $20 will work with it, too.

   So, tomorrow I order a new printer. It comes with the standard lightly
filled cartridges, but as little as I use it I probably won't need to buy
replacements for a while.

   I'll see if there's already a CUPS driver for it. If not, I have both the
.deb and .rpm versions downloaded.

Best regards,

Rich