On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 03:19:34PM -0400, Howard Krakower wrote:
> I first installed Ubuntu, but it would not recognize her model of
> printer (Samsung ML-1865) - all it would print out said that it was
> the wrong driver.
The foomatic database doesn't include it.
http://www.openprinting.org/printer/Samsung/Samsung-ML-1865W
Which driver exactly?
> So after a couple of fruitless days working on that,
> I wiped the drive and installed Mint. I tried using a Brother HL-2140
> printer - it installed the driver correctly,
The proprietary one, or another one that wasn't mentioned below?
http://www.openprinting.org/printer/Brother/Brother-HL-2140
What other potential dependencies have you and have you not installed?
> Then I installed OpenSUSE, which had always been my favorite flavour
> of linux, mainly because it works well for wireless networking for
> Dell computers.
Shouldn't matter what distro, as long as you have a decent kernel, and
a non-insanely out of date or built version of wpa_supplicant…
> Attaching the Samsung HL-1865 printer,
HL or ML now?
> FWIW, when the printer was attached to a Windoze notebook the test
> pages printed out fine.
Printer drivers are usually developed for Windows first.