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Knowing Knoppix/Peripheral devices

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Printing

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Knoppix has built-in support for hundreds of popular printers. Parallel and USB connections are supported. The best supported inkjet printers are HP and Epson. Many Canon and a few Lexmark printers are also supported. On the laser front, all greyscale Postscript and most greyscale Printer Control Language (PCL) laser printers work.

However, some printers do not work with Knoppix. The printers that do not work tend to be cheap Lexmark inkjet printers, and very low cost colour laser printers. Colour laser printers work if they are fully Postscript or PCL compatible. Unfortunately, very low cost colour laser printers tend not to be compatible with either. They are therefore completely incompatible with Knoppix.

To set up a printer connected by a USB or parallel cable:

  1. Click the Knoppix icon in the Panel.
  2. Point to “Configure”.
  3. Click “Configure printer(s)”.
  4. Wait for a moment while the KDE “Printing Manager” starts.
  5. Click “Add”.
  6. Click “Add Printer/Class…”.
  7. The welcome screen of the “Add Printer” wizard will appear.
  8. Click Next.
  9. Select “Local printer”, then click Next.
  10. Select the port that your printer is on. If your printer is connected to the computer's parallel port, select Parallel Port #1 (/dev/lp0). If you have a USB printer, select USB Printer #1 (/dev/usb/lp0). Click Next.
  11. Select the manufacturer and model of your printer. If you cannot find your exact printer model in the list, try the nearest available. For example the HP PSC 1200 driver works with the HP PSC 1350, even though the HP PSC 1350 is not in the list. Click Next.
  12. This screen appears if Knoppix knows of more than one driver that can operate your printer. Usually the first or the recommended option will be fine. Click Next.
  13. Click the “Test” button to print a test page on your printer. After a short pause, your printer should start working.
  14. When the test page has finished, click Next four times until you get to the “General Information” screen. Enter a short name for your printer, then click Next.
  15. Click Finish.
  16. The Printing Manager will be displayed again. You may now print from all the applications included in Knoppix. When you exit Knoppix, the printer setup will be lost. However, there is a way to save the setup. See the later section, “Finding permanence”.

The test page paper size is US Letter by default. If you are using A4 paper, the test page won't print all the way to the bottom of the page. This is normal.

Web link
The Linux printing home page:
http://www.linuxprinting.org/

Scanning

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Knoppix has built-in support for some scanners. Scanning in Knoppix is simple, if you are lucky enough to have a fully compatible scanner. Scanner support is provided by a program called “Scanner Access Is Now Easy”. If your scanner is fully supported, you don't have to do any setup at all. To test a scanner using Knoppix:

  1. Click K menu.
  2. Click Multimedia.
  3. Click XScanImage.
  4. If the scanner is detected, the device name will be shown at the top of the window. For example, if you have an Epson Perfection 1260 USB, it will say Plustek:/dev/usbscanner.
  5. Assuming your scanner is detected, click “Preview Window”.
  6. Click Acquire Preview.
  7. The image that the scanner sees will be shown.
  8. Lasso the area to be scanned using the mouse.
  9. Click “Scan”.
  10. The marked area will be scanned to an image file.
Web link
The Scanner Access Is Now Easy home page:
http://www.sane-project.org/