Brother 2900 for FC3

David Curry dsccable at comcast.net
Fri Apr 8 04:33:25 UTC 2005


Cyrus Adkisson wrote:

> I think I bought a printer without an open-source driver, a Brother 
> FAX-2900. It's one of those fax/copy/laser printing things. The 
> Brother Corporation makes an RPM for RedHat 9 (which is, what, 4 or 5 
> years old?) but nothing else. I've tried to get them to provide source 
> code for compilation on other architectures, but they apparently 
> didn't listen.
>
> My questions are:
>
> 1. Is there an open source driver for this printer that I don't know 
> about
> 2. If I install the redhat 9 RPM and get the files onto my FC3 
> machine, how can I get lpd to recognize whatever driver file I need to 
> work.
> 3. Aside from whether or not I will be able to get this to work, can 
> someone tell me how open source printer driver projects get started 
> and whether I have any hope of someone writing a driver for this 
> particular model (I haven't the foggiest clue how nor the time to do 
> it myself).
>
The issue of a driver for Brother multifunction fax/copy/printer 
machines has surfaced on the list in the past.  I don't remember any 
positive feedback during that earlier exchange.

Some time may lapse before you find a driver or succeed in getting one 
developed.  A speedier alternative may well be to replace the Brother 
machine with one  that clearly does have open source support or a vendor 
supplied driver that works with your system.  Drivers are available (and 
included in Fedora Core distribution) for HP multifunction machines.




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