Lexmark printers: Linux drivers? Yes but 32-bit...

Lexmark Platinum Pro905 MARCHANDS €     Amazon mark...  210.99  Compare prices

You may have noticed in our printer tests: Lexmarks are often mentioned to be Linux compatible. The same goes for HPs in fact. Lexmark supplies Linux drivers on its web site.

Yesterday, here in editorial, we installed a new network printer: the Lexmark Pro905, which inspired us this winter, confident in its capacity to suit our varied editorial team - three Macs, a Linux and various versions of Windows... But when it came to recognising it, we were in for a bad surprise: the thing wouldn't co-operate.

Lexmark does supply a Linux driver on the Pro905 support page, at least for the main versions: Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora et OpenSUSE — for the sector's heavyweights, though note the absence of Mandriva. When we installed it on our Ubuntu workstation however it didn't work: the driver package is limited to 32-bit architectures.

64-bit

A few years ago this wouldn't have worried us but today most computers, even entry level, have 64-bit processors and 64-bit operating systems are becoming more common.

It's difficult to evaluate exactly the proportion of 64-bits out of the total of Linux computers. Smolt, which has grown out of Fedora, the specialist in hardware stats, is one of the few organisations to publish statistics detailed by architecture; according to the most recent stats, 64-bit systems represented 29% of the 250,000 machines monitored.

Sure, the fact that Linux 32-bit drivers are on offer is welcome. But we always want more: when will those of us who've moved up to 64-bit systems be catered for, attracted as we were by the prospect of being able to support more than 4 GB of RAM or improved performances - the latest Phoronix benchmarks opposing 32 and 64-bit for Ubuntu are strongly in favour of the 64-bit system?

D.I.Y.

Forced installation of the driver: welcome to MS-DOS...

And the worst of it is most Linux 64-bit systems have compatability libraries for programmes written in 32 bits (poetically named ia32-libs). In fact it's the Lexmark installation script that, detecting a 64-bit system, refuses to finish its task.

You can find on the net a procedure to get around this limitation: by telling it not to execute, then extracting the .deb package manually and forcing its installation in spite of the architecture conflict. The printer is recognised straight off and works perfectly.

The problem is that you run four commands in terminal. This won't worry most Linux users but this doesn't mean that it's necessarily a welcome task to have to go through. It also means that when you do this, you're not necessarily respecting Lexmark's driver license contract to the letter.

It is regrettable that Lexmark doesn't supply open drivers or support an open source project (as HP does for example), but this isn't today's debate: Lexmark has chosen the proprietary driver route and the user isn't necessarily handicapped by this.

What is a shame is that this driver is limited to one architecture, although it works with others and that a little installer development would allow 64-bit Linux users to use it legally and simply.

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