Brother printer drivers

[wedderburn]

hey,
brother makes a series of linux drivers (they're non gpl) with a cups gpl wrapper http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/

anways they're really nice for when you need to get your colour inkjet or scanner/printer combo to work.

is there any chance of this making it into the repo's or even been auto detected and installed with the right drivers?

thanks

[Zdravko]

Yes, there is a big chance!

[Phil Airtime]

I have a Brother HL-1250 which was detected and installed by Gutsy. Is this something different?

[Zdravko]

Hmm. Dunno really. Maybe not.

[wedderburn]

I have a Brother HL-1250 which was detected and installed by Gutsy. Is this something different?

i had a b/w laser printer that was auto detected too, its more to do with the multi function center printers ( fax copier printer) theres also a fair few printers that arn't auto detected like my MFC-4440CN and MCF-3220C which i need these drivers for.

[Zdravko]

So as a conclusion - good news. There is a high chance things will work out of the box in Hardy Heron.

[HotShotDJ]

I have a Brother HL-1250 which was detected and installed by Gutsy. Is this something different?Yes. Many Brother printers (the laser printers?) simply need the proper PPD file in order to be fully functional. Brother has released these under the GPL and are already available in a default Feisty and Gutsy installation (my HL-5170DN worked "out of the box" for both feisty and gutsy).

However, other Brother printers need the cups wrapper for the proprietary drivers. The GOOD news is that Brother does support Linux for most (if not all) of their printers. The BAD news is that some of them have a proprietary component that you need to download directly from Brother. I honestly don't know if it would be possible to get those proprietary bits into the Ubuntu repositories. If it is possible, it would be great. If not, at least they are available, which is more than one can say for other printers (like Lexmark or Canon).

[Zdravko]

It seems that even printers may cause problems in Ubuntu. I hope Hardy will support all of them.

[HotShotDJ]

It seems that even printers may cause problems in Ubuntu. I hope Hardy will support all of them.Yes. That would be nice. But how can Ubuntu (or any other operation system, for that matter) support hardware when the manufacturer refuses to either provide redistributable drivers or the technical specifications that would permit such support?

[markymarknz]

hey,
brother makes a series of linux drivers (they're non gpl) with a cups gpl wrapper http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/

anways they're really nice for when you need to get your colour inkjet or scanner/printer combo to work.

is there any chance of this making it into the repo's or even been auto detected and installed with the right drivers?

thanks

Thanks for the link to the drivers Wedderburn.
I have a brother DCP-540CN which is a network printer and isn't picked up by Ubuntu's auto detection system.
The website has pretty good instructions and now I have setup to print and also scan with xsane.
I'm pretty happy now coz I haven't managed to get it working before :)

[Col-1023]

I have a brother MFC 210C.

I've got it up and running in fiesty, but I had to follow a fairly detailed tutorial.

Is this multi-function device (printer, scanner, copier) likely to be autodected in hardy, since brother does supply drivers, it would make life sooooo much easier.

[HotShotDJ]

I just went over to the Brother web site referenced by wedderburn and was pleasantly surprised to see a lot more GPL licensed drivers than the last time I visited the site! Printer drivers, scanner drivers and a fax utility! That bodes quite well for default support in future versions of (K)Ubuntu!

[altonbr]

I'm happy to see this project on the go: http://brother-mfc.sourceforge.net/

I've been battling to get my MFC-8440 scanner and fax machine working for years. At least with Gusty the printer automatically installed.

This thread never helped as the drivers Brother provides for the MFC-8440 are corrupt (or at least not compatible with Ubuntu): http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=105703

[amano]

I have a brother MFC 210C.

I've got it up and running in fiesty, but I had to follow a fairly detailed tutorial.

Is this multi-function device (printer, scanner, copier) likely to be autodected in hardy, since brother does supply drivers, it would make life sooooo much easier.

Yep. I have got the MFC-115C and the tutorial was great, but shouldn't be needed (it required some amount of copy and paste work). I would be great to have this things working out of the box as well.

My printer didn't work anymore after the upgrade to gutsy, so I had to redo the tutorial again.