system-config-printer: make driver installation optional
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
jockey (Ubuntu) |
Invalid
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Lucid |
Invalid
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
system-config-printer (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
High
|
Unassigned | ||
Lucid |
Fix Released
|
High
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
Binary package hint: system-
Configuring a new printer is awfully painful in Lucid :-(
(1) I just tried to configure my PostScript network printer (a Kyocera FS1800+, correctly identified in the first step of system-
(2) In the next step, jockey-gtk starts to search for drivers. After quite a while, it offers a list of ca. 35 drivers (!?). Neither does jockey-gtk mark the relevant one (I have a Kyocera printer, remember?), nor does it even sort this list. OK, I painfully scroll through the list, hunting for the Kyocera driver and selecting it. Now I 'activate' the driver. Activating obviously means installing - so why don't name this button 'Install driver'?
Installing takes full 2 minutes (fast internet connection, 2,4 GHz Dual Core Desktop CPU, 6 GB RAM). (jockey-backend runs at 100 % CPU during the whole time, completly exhausting one of my two cores. What does it do, in gods name?)
(3) Next, I have to 'Close' the driver dialog. I don't want to close, I want to continue! Whatever.
Next, I get again (!) the choice to select a driver. Out of some 80 manufactures (my printer is still a Kyocera, remember?), out of hundreds of models. OK, I understand, previously I *installed* driver (though the dialog said I activated one), no I *select* one.
No Ubuntu beginner will ever understand what he/she had done now and why it was so complicated. Installing the same printer on Mac OS X (which also uses CUPS!) is done within 30 seconds and with a few mouse clicks.
PS: Now comes the fun part. On another Lucid test installation (I am book author and have been writing books on Ubuntu since 5.04) I choose *not* to install any driver, completely dropping step (2) from above. And guess what: The printer configuration still works. (I thought it would, I never had to install any drivers to use my printer.)
To get back to this bug report:
- please sort the drivers in jockey
- please make the driver installation optional and clearly say so
What happened to Ubuntu's printer configuration? This is a huge step back!
I second that. Plus I'd like to _chose_, whether I want jockey to step in my way or whether I'd just like to select the driver from the list of installed ones. For a brother-printer which works after installing one single .deb (MFC 7820N, brother- cups-wrapper- laser), jockey installed 34 packages, just to import some rpm-based driver. What a nonsense.
(it installed html2text po-debconf debhelper librpmio0 rpm-common librpm0 librpmbuild0 rpm2cpio rpm alien libsys- hostname- long-perl libmail- sendmail- perl libqt3-mt libqt4-network libqt4-assistant libqt4-xml libqt4-dbus libqt4-script libqt4-designer libqt4-svg libqt4-opengl libqt4-gui libqt4-sql libqt4-sql-sqlite m4 ncurses-term pax lsb-core lsb-graphics lsb-cxx lsb-desktop lsb-printing lsb openprinting- ppds-postscript -brother)
I really appreciate the possibility to have jockey care for the whole driver installation, but I also would like to skip the step (which I did by pressing "Close" in Jockey) altogether.
Regards, Lars