User talk:Es20490446e

Linking to nodevice.com

Latest comment: 1 July 20186 comments2 people in discussion

-- Pypi (talk) 04:03, 15 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I'm not happy with including the nodevice.com link added back to CUPS/Printer sharing ([1]). I'd be unhappy downloading drivers from a 3rd party site instead of directly from the manufacturer, and recommending a specific site here seems out of place (this is not a Windows wiki!). What is special about these drivers that prevents you from just downloading them from the manufacturer? Is there some kind of semi-official website we could link to instead?

Also, welcome to the wiki!

Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e) (talk) 14:49, 15 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for your point. I would normally do as you mention, but:

Most printing drivers these days aren't provided by manufacturers themselves, but from Microsoft. If it happens that your printer is somehow old the printer drivers won't be listed in the Bonjour Print Services Wizard, and you won't be able to download them from the manufacturer's page.

It happens that nodevice.com is the only site that provides drivers from Microsoft too. Just do the test, search for printing drivers for my Deskjet 930c for Windows 10.

Buying a new printer isn't also a good option. Most printers these days stop working after 2 or 3 years, so I purposely buy vintage ones to make sure they will last.

Nevertheless, reading the comments at MyWOT, it appears that drivers in that site usually carry unintended software like web browser bars and such. Even when the drivers are good and signed themselves, and you can install them without opening any executable file.

Perhaps pointing that out in the wiki would be the best solution. What do you think?

-- Pypi (talk) 01:36, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I've removed the link for now [2]. If keeping the link ends up being the best solution it definitely needs some kind of warning with it, especially given the ratings on the website you linked to. The point of the wiki is to help people trying to set up printers on Arch, regardless of the age, so I'd agree that buying a new printer is not a solution.

HP's website includes a page on installing the built-in driver - does that work, or is your use-case somehow different? I couldn't see the driver you mentioned on nodevice.com's deskjet 930c page, and the suggested download appears to be a plain old executable of some kind.

If there isn't an easy way to install the drivers on the Windows machine I'd lean towards preferring to set up the printer queue with native drivers on the server side and using generic postscript drivers on the clients as explained at CUPS/Printer_sharing#Linux_server_-_Windows_client.

Note that it is standard practice on the wiki to Help:Discussion#Joining_a_discussion indent your replies, although I messed up by indenting my first post here...

Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e) (talk) 17:25, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I'm using this formatting just because it appears easier to read.

The procedure from HP won't work. Basically you aren't installing the driver from the Control Panel, but from a wizard provided by Bonjour Print Services.

The wizard, at some point during the installation, asks you for the ".inf" files of the driver. Then you can use the downloaded package from nodevice.com without needing to execute its ".exe" file.

In my case, from the Deskjet 930c page, it's the second one listed.

I have checked out that this is way simpler than using a generic postscript driver. Basically the printer server doesn't need any special configuration, and it will work out of the box even with a dynamic IP address.

Using the Internet Printing Protocol, on the other hand, requires you to set up a static IP. Or configure each individual client to recognise the printer server as valid.

-- Pypi (talk) 22:02, 17 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

I guess this is your talk page, so I'll use the different format...

OK, thanks for clarifying. If you just need to find the Microsoft .inf, presumably it is already installed somewhere. Can you find it in the DriverStore [3]? Note that I'm shooting in the dark a bit here as I don't have access to a Windows machine to muck around with.

I'm confused by your comments linking IPP and client-side vs server-side drivers. IPP is just a protocol for talking to the remote print server (like Samba) and has no connection with the driver used - under the hood, my understanding is that Bonjour is combining ZeroConf networking (aka Bonjour, typically implemented with Avahi on Linux) to locate the print server and IPP to actually print (see also CUPS/Printer sharing#Enabling browsing). Client side vs server side drivers is an independent detail, and both Samba and IPP (and hence Bonjour) should work regardless of which way things are set up. You should be able to set up the drivers on the server and then just use a generic postscript driver on the client with Bonjour, just like you can with IPP - the only trick might be finding where the generic postscript driver .inf file is installed.

Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e) (talk) 15:21, 1 July 2018 (UTC)Reply

Using the generic driver, the printer prints garbage.
In Windows 10, the Driver Store is empty.
Under the Windows directory there aren't any other printer drivers.
The Bonjour procedure using external drivers crashes from time to time.

So I have changed my mind, I'm simply not willing to give any support to Windows. If someone wants proper printing support, then install a proper operating system.