Hacker News Reader

Comment by tdees40 | Hacker News Reader

"Just as usable by end users as Windows."

Have you seen a non-programmer install a printer on a Linux machine? It's terrifying.

At least as of version 12.04, Ubuntu [1] automagically detects my wireless HP Laserjet printer (albeit with some slightly reduced functionality, IIRC). My wife's Windows 7 laptop struggles with it; the install process was more involved and the printer sometimes refuses to wake up when sending a print job to it.

[1] The modern desktop-oriented distro I'm more familiar with. I'm sure other user-friendly distros handle it similarly well.

At the very most, it might involve having to navigate the CUPS web interface (which, admittedly, is a pile of shit; thanks, Apple) in order to get a printer setup. Still rarely involves having to install drivers (though some vendors are better than others; Brother and HP tend to be the most Linux-compatible, while Canon and Konica Minolta have tended to require driver installation on some distros).

It takes a programmer to click on a "Ok" button now? I seem to recall the process on Windows being at least as involved.

What installation? At the most, you'll be asked to install packages from HP and you click okay and you're done. On Windows, it's still likely that you'll need to download drivers from a website.

I have. It works as well or better than on Windows. College freshmen, most of whom have never seen a Linux machine manage it.

I generally just plug in the printer and then hit print...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com