Cyrus Adkisson wrote:
I think I bought a printer without an open-source driver, a Brother FAX-2900. It's one of those fax/copy/laser printing things. The Brother Corporation makes an RPM for RedHat 9 (which is, what, 4 or 5 years old?) but nothing else. I've tried to get them to provide source code for compilation on other architectures, but they apparently didn't listen.The issue of a driver for Brother multifunction fax/copy/printer machines has surfaced on the list in the past. I don't remember any positive feedback during that earlier exchange.
My questions are:
1. Is there an open source driver for this printer that I don't know about
2. If I install the redhat 9 RPM and get the files onto my FC3 machine, how can I get lpd to recognize whatever driver file I need to work.
3. Aside from whether or not I will be able to get this to work, can someone tell me how open source printer driver projects get started and whether I have any hope of someone writing a driver for this particular model (I haven't the foggiest clue how nor the time to do it myself).
Some time may lapse before you find a driver or succeed in getting one developed. A speedier alternative may well be to replace the Brother machine with one that clearly does have open source support or a vendor supplied driver that works with your system. Drivers are available (and included in Fedora Core distribution) for HP multifunction machines.
