Options for emulators/wine?

[Chris Rees]

On 26 September 2011 09:27, Thomas Mueller <mueller6727 at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> from Michael Holmes <holmesmich at gmail.com>:
>
>> HAL shouldn't be necessary, but you might need to manually set up
>> CUPS. Winemaker is just a tool for building open-source Windows apps
>> on Wine with ease. There are a few GUI tools to set up CUPS, but if I
>> recall correctly, the web interface to CUPS is pretty
>> self-explanatory. HP do have a nice GUI called HPLIP for utilising
>> their printers on Linux (and ported to FreeBSD) available on ports as
>> print/hplip, but it doesn't work with the GENERIC console config, and
>> seems to be quite awkward to set up (you apparently cannot load USB
>> mass storage until the printer is 'adopted' by the generic USB stack).
>
> I don't know what you mean by "adopted" (by the generic USB stack): seems mystic to me.

Some rather strange printers will be recognised by umass before ugen
recognises them; you have to plug it in before umass is loaded or it
becomes a mass storage device.

> CUPS would be necessary to setup printing for BSD and Linux, but would it be necessary when using Wine and going the MS-Windows way?

I'm not sure that the Windows printer stack is included in Wine, why
would you rather do that than use CUPS? The gutenprint drivers are
often of a higher quality than the manufacturer's provided ones, and
they install less trash.

> Package message said that ulpt had to be turned off in kernel config and not loaded as a module.
>
> On the older computer, I tried unsuccessfully to setup the printer last June 29 from both NetBSD and FreeBSD, using hplip in both cases.  Predominant message was "No devices found".
>
> NetBSD pkgsrc had only an outdated hpijs, but pkgsrc-wip (http://pkgsrc-wip.sourceforge.net/) had hplip.  Message said also to disable umass, but that was too harsh, and prevented recognizing USB sticks.

As mentioned before, disable umass, and once the printer has been
recognise reload umass.

> Would Linux offer a better chance with hplip than BSD?  I tried also with Linux (Slackware 13.0), but hplip version was behind, and that failed.
>
> There is also the Ethernet option with the printer, but I need an Ethernet switch or additional router for that, which I intend to order.
>
> First attempt to build hplip on the new computer failed due to libieee1284 dependency being for i386 only.  Subsequently I turned off that option after finding it was for parallel-port scanners only, not USB.
>

CUPS almost always makes things printer-related a million times
easier. Don't forget it's the main printing system in the modern
Macs-- Apple manage to make it work with almost anything!

Chris