fragility

My parents (who never cared less about computers up until recently) have been using my old desktop lately (which runs Ubuntu), and since the aging Epson Stylus 440 wasn’t able to print anymore, they decided to get a new printer. When my mom called me asking if a promotion on an all-in-one Lexmark x1290 was worth it, i browsed to the OpenPrinting database (old linuxprinting.org) and gave her an OK, as the information on it was “works perfectly”. However, works perfectly doesn’t mean it works out of the box, and the information on the x1290 page was really scarce (which i didn’t really notice at the time, my lazy brain only processed the words “works perfectly”).

After going trough a couple of tutorials, i found out the reason for that it’s because there’s no free software driver for it but i ended up getting it working with a binary driver and i decided to compile a tutorial for Ubuntu (which is not much different than the Suse tutorial i found) and get it online. Enjoy.

Update:
Argh ! Looks like the copying function only works with the printer connected to the computer and looks like these Linux drivers can’t get it to copy anything. Is this stupid or what ? I officially hate Lexmark.

Update 2:
Well, the Lexmark soap opera is over. We got a refund and now we’re buying a decent fully Linux supported printer.