If you think setting up and using a printer in Linux is too much trouble, take heart—youre not alone.
To come to grips with a wide range of Linux printing-related issues, the OSDL-sponsored Portland Project has just held the first Desktop Linux Printing Summit in Atlanta.
The meeting was attended by about 40 developers from printer vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard, Lanier and Lexmark; operating system distributors like Apple Computer, Debian and Novell; those two Linux desktop powers, GNOME and KDE; and more.
Their job?
To nail down exactly whats wrong with printing and Linux, and to work out ways to resolve these problems once and for all.
Its a big job, but judging by early reports from KDE developers Cristian Tibirna and Kurt Pfeifle and Intel Linux client architect Waldo Bastian, things went extremely well.
The “Portland spirit” of everyone working together to solve common problems—rather than wasting time and energy on “Whose approach is the best approach?”—seems to be alive and well.
The results were, as OSDL Desktop Linux initiative manager John Cherry, with some assistance from GIMP developer Robert L. Krawitz, put it, a list of areas that “will get [the] most attention in the next stage of development.”