[Wine] re: Help installing application

[L. Rahyen]

On Saturday July 7 2007 21:33, M Thompson wrote:
> Thanks for the info.  I am really surprised about HP - I have two (a
> laserjet that is almost nine years old and a small photosmart) and both
> work very well.

	My experience is different. For example, I have HP scanner and it isn't 
supported under Linux though very same model is (it should be noted that as 
far as I know HP don't provide Linux support at all - it is provided by 
others who wrote drivers for Linux for HP devices). Most scanners from HP 
still have no support. Even worse, even Windows driver (I use it under 
VMWare) don't make to work scanner well - because scanner itself is far from 
perfect and Windows driver are even worse - it even often "forget" to turn 
off the light in the scanner (no, this is not because I stop virtual machine, 
I have it running 24 hours per day usually - so that's real bug in HP 
driver). I also have seen HP color laser printer - its quality was very bad 
and there is no support for Linux for specific model I have looked.
	Maybe situation with their ink printers is better. I do not know (I seen only 
their scanner and color laser printers). But my personal experience with HP 
was very bad.
	What about Epson, if you buy it, it WILL be expensive. You cannot use cheap 
ink or cheap toner with it (it is possible to use toner and ink from 
non-Epson manufacturer and this will save money but will be relatively 
expensive anyway if quality of ink or toner is suitable). If you care about 
saving money Lexmark is better choice (because even if you will use bad ink 
it will not harm printer itself at all; in case of Epson ink printers you may 
and likely will kill it with bad inks) and it has offical support under 
Linux.
	I have no idea about HP ink printers though. Never seen 'em.
	Anyway, in all cases don't forget to see in the Google what others talk about 
device you are going to purchase. In my experience this has saved me a lot of 
time and prevented possible problems.
	Oh well, this is offtopic here...

> I VERY much appreciate your time and efforts.  If I can make it work, I will 
> let everyone know.  If not, thanks again for taking the time to help me:)  
> I will try my best to pay it forward.

	If your program is using USB directly and you cannot or don't want to use lp 
port instead then for "fast result" try VMWare ( http://www.vmware.com - they 
have a demo version) - this is exactly what I use when WINE fail to support 
something I need (mostly Autodesk AutoCAD and 3ds max, and sometimes I use my 
HP scanner). QEmu is free but it also have less functionality and it is may 
be hard to set it up correctly for some users.
	But typically I try to avoid use of virtual machine - because they run 
Windows and Windows is buggy - it is a mess to run more than 1-2 programs at 
once there. So I use WINE when this is possible, even for communication with 
devices like Samsung mobile phone (don't like it and I didn't purchased it 
actually - this was some kind of a gift to me).
	Good luck to you with getting your program running!