-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 <rant on> Hi all. Ok, so Linux is coming along nicely (despite the market games of some). However there are glaring holes in some things, that aren't necessarily Linux' or any of the distros fault per se. One thing is scanner support. Ironically Mac OSX is have this issue as well. I have to fairly nice scanners. One is an HP 4470c and the other is a Umax 4000U. Neither of these are support by Linux, or moreover, are not support "for" Linux by particular venders OEMs. I the case of both of these devices the manufacturer won't cooperate with the devs at the sane project and release any info so they can build a driver/s. I have been googling the hell out of this subject and this is why I've come to the conclusion that the devs have to Backwards engineer these devices and are still fight with them. in the case of the HP, it moreover a RealTek issue since the make the chip/components that are used in the HP device. To the devs credit they have tried repeatedly to contact Realtek about this and have gotten the cold shoulder (aka no reply ). Now I think that, since Linus is coming in to its own, that perhaps the Rep for the Linuc companies should be able to convince thosein charge could be persuaded by Linux/Linux distros to be a littlefriendly. But Ii'm not holding my breath. I strongly thing the scanner (as well as other common SOHO/SMB devices) software issues need to be addressed. Perhaps have SuSE exec meet with the company and persuad these OEMs to help out a little. Especially since these products (Umax and HP 4470) are no longer sold by HP. So, what's the big deal for these guys? The devices are no longer sold in the stores - and therefore what difference does it make if the open up the drivers that would just be sitting in the office on a disc. But Oh Well. <rant off> Cheers, Curtis. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2-rc1-SuSE (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/d/nYiqnGhdjCOJsRAul2AJ4ibJi1pXGp8iuAFsoIGoNEr1v2kwCZAZGQ DlePHddCMvx8uOBWh85wu1A= =XaEj -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----