Brother MFC6800 and Ubuntu 7.04

1. Brother MFC 6800 - drivers are available for debian distributions at http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/index.html

2. Update from 7.04 to 7.10 - what glitches?

3. Which programmes written for Windows do you want to run? There are several ways you can do this: Crossover, Wine, VirtualBox. Many programmes have a Linux equivalent.

Thanks Andre

1) I've been to that page at the Brother website and not knowing what to download, I downloaded CUPS whatever that is and that is not working. I'm not a programmer and have no idea what most of the info on that Brother page is.
2) The glitches I've been told about with Gutsy has to do with video.
3) Over the years, I have a number of programs on my computer and I was told that WINE would emulate something so that virtually everything would work with Ubuntu. Is this out to lunch?

Randie

Hello Randie

1. CUPS is the Common Unix Printing System. Some pieces of hardware do not work in Linux. Brother is trying hard to provide support. I will have another look at the Brother page later to see what steps have to be taken to install the right driver.
2. I am not aware of any glitches with changing from 7.04 to 7.10 although many believe that 7.04 is a better build that 7.10 ( I use 6.06 ). In a few weeks 8.04 will be released so if you want to upgrade wait until then. It would be better to do a clean install, that means overwriting your present installation with the new release. You would need to save everything in your home directory to another medium such as a USB stick or another hard drive.
3. Wine can run many programmes originally written for Windows but not all. I run two Windows unique (no Linux equivalent) programmes in Crossover (the commercial arm of Wine) and one in a virtual machine where XP is installed as a guest of the host Ubuntu. If you tell me which programmes you "must have", I can advise you how to accomplish that.

Have a look at "Codeweavers Crossover Linux" and "Innotek VirtualBox".

Hello Randie,

The best information that I could find for you is at this URL: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-674727.html

The problem of getting some hardware to work in Linux is a common one and is due to some manufacturers not making any effort to provide drivers for users of operating systems other than Microsoft's products or keeping their driver codes a secret. That problem is compounded by the use of multifunction devices where separate drivers may be necessary. For your information, one manufacturer who has consistently supported Linux is Hewlett-Packard. You might like to keep that in mind if you ever want to buy another printer or scanner.

Andre