[Wine] Can I use Wine to Run the Scan Function of a HP Officejet 4215?

[L. Rahyen]

On Monday July 30 2007 18:22, deedee wrote:
> AFAIK, all hardware is installed and operated through Linux and
> that's where Wine will look for it. Any hardware that isn't
> working under Linux will not work under Wine on a Linux system
> (at least that's the rule of thumb I use).

	Actually there is a lot of important cases when unsupported by Linux hardware 
works with WINE. Currently this is only possible for devices which work via 
tty and lp ports; devices which use ttyusb hardware also may work. For 
example my Samsung phone is unsupported on Linux and I have USB data-cabel. 
With WINE I can run Windows software so I can use all functionality of my 
phone via USB data-cabel.
	Unfortunatelly in case of non-ttyusb devices (almost all printers and 
scanners) you are out of luck. You need native (Linux) support or you can try 
to use lp port instead of usb but this will be slow even if it will work.

> I don't know which Linux distribution you're using and I doubt 
> that it matters (but it may), however, I've always had HP 
> multifunction printers (copiers, scanners, etc.) connected to my 
> Linux systems since I migrated to Linux in 2002 and have never 
> had a problem using all the functions. I use Mandriva Linux. 

	Personally I have HP scanner unsupported on Linux. It is interesting that 
very similar models are supported - my model just have minor hardware 
difference but this is enough to make it impossible to work without rewriting 
Linux driver for similar model.
	If you really need to make to work any USB device (fully or partially 
unsupported on Linux and cannot find support on Linux and have no time to 
write drivers yourself you can use VMWare or QEmu and Windows drivers. 
Unfortunatelly in my case both HP software and HP Windows driver are buggy; 
HP software not only buggy but also have terrible GUI - at least in case of 
my scanner.
	Of course first you should try to use Google to find out people who already 
found a way to make everything work on Linux. Only if that fails and you 
havn't time to write a driver yourself you can use VMWare and QEmu.
	Good luck!