Dell printers
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Do all Dell printers require proprietary firmware? I've checked the h-node section for printers and Dell isn't even listed at a vendor. For school I usually e-mail documents to myself and then print them using the school's computer (with their Windows computers), but it would be nice if I could just use the one from home, which is a Dell 1600n. Is there any way to get this printer usable?
Sadly, only HP printers normally support free software (though some of them don't; there are a few dozen (I think 50 or so) printers in the Laserjet line that require proprietary firmware, and some other printers that only have partial support).
The list on h-node only shows vendors that have had printers reported. So it not being there simply means that no one has ever reported a Dell printer. Maybe you could report yours.
First do the test yourself.
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I had an old Dell 5150 inkjet printer that was recognized by and worked fine with Trisquel as late as 5.5. The printer died before I installed 6.0.
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There are lots of laser printers which work with Trisquel purely because they support postscript.
Dell doesn't design printers either last I checked which means somebody else did and it is 100% certain that it depends on those companies which actually designed the printer having released the code. There probably are some Dell printers which are free software friendly. Dell was selling printers originally which were made by HP. However they have since moved on to working with others (Lexmark, and probably others).
The best thing to do is look at HP's documentation. There are several places to look once you have the printer model looked up. One of them being the firmware, plug-in, and then HPLIP version. There may be variations of a printer model though and I can't confirm that all variations are going to work.
And as always we do sell a handful of Trisquel-friendly printers.
One other note. You probably won't have support out of the box for any HP printers readily available under Trisquel 6. The HPLIP version included in Trisquel pre-dates HP's current line-up. The HP printers we ship at ThinkPenguin were acquired pre-discontinuation on the other hand and do all work with Trisquel 6 out of the box. We stock models that are LTS friendly to ensure proper support for GNU/Linux and free software operating systems such as Trisquel & Parabola GNU/Linux.
I don't know if he did research beforehand, but my dad recently got a new HP printer (probably from an electronics store, I didn't ask), and it's supported by the HPLIP available in Trisquel. Are you sure about that "probably" part? I just wonder if my dad got lucky, or if stores tend to have slightly old printers in stock, or if there's some other nuance.
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I think I recently went through HP's entire current product line that is readily available in stores within the US. They pretty much (if not all) require a more recent version of HPLIP than is available in Trisquel 6. However that said there might have been something available for particular categories that I wrote off. My focus was mainly on consumer-oriented printers. I might be mistaken about another category of printer. For instance maybe there are some $2,000 USD + printers or similar still available. I probably stopped at around the $1000 USD mark.
Quite honestly I don't feel like going through all the printers to provide more solid info here. It is time consuming and I probably spent hours doing it already (twice I think). If somebody really wants to do it right and document it all they could. It would provide for a while something a tad bit better than what we have now. All they'd need to do is look at HP's site and do the research using HP's Recommended Printer Models list. You have to go and look up each model and then check three or four things related to plug-ins, firmware, HPLIP version, and ???. In any case. Have fun.
I guess I'll put a price tag on it in case somebody really really wants this. I'll do it if someone wants to donate $500.00 USD to the Trisquel project. Just contact me first place so I have the opportunity to commit/back out if things change (I'm mainly referring to people who might read this at some future date).
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