best to connect printers via usb or parallel port?

[Troy Piggins]

About to buy a Brother HL2040 laser printer (I've read it's good with
Ubuntu and the price is right).

Couple of questions because I haven't really had much success with
printers on older distros:

- is it best to connect via the usb port or parallel/printer port?
- why?
- if computer already running, can I plug printer into usb port and it
gets auto detected and can print straight away, or do I need to
reboot/restart some service?

Thanks.

--
Troy Piggins - Ubuntu ascii logo candidate no 2:
,-o Ubuntu v5.10 (Breezy Badger): kernel 2.6.12-9-386,
o ) postfix 2.2.4, procmail 3.22, mutt 1.5.11i,
`-o slrn 0.9.8.1/rt (score_color patch), vim 6.4

[Sebastian Georgi]

Troy Piggins schrieb:

> About to buy a Brother HL2040 laser printer (I've read it's good with
> Ubuntu and the price is right).
>
> Couple of questions because I haven't really had much success with
> printers on older distros:
>
> - is it best to connect via the usb port or parallel/printer port?
> - why?
> - if computer already running, can I plug printer into usb port and it
> gets auto detected and can print straight away, or do I need to
> reboot/restart some service?
>
> Thanks.
>

Connecting a printer via usb is pretty straight-forward. Though you
might have to restart the cups printing system (cupsys) to propagate the
new printer status if you replug it. And ubuntu likes to mix up the usb
ports as well. I have two printers connected via usb and need to switch
one on before booting, because otherwise the devices will be
irreversably switched until reboot. Probably this is a thing I was just
too lazy to fix yet..

Regards,
Seb

[Troy Piggins]

* Sebastian Georgi wrote:

> Troy Piggins schrieb:

>> About to buy a Brother HL2040 laser printer (I've read it's good with
>> Ubuntu and the price is right).
>>
>> Couple of questions because I haven't really had much success with
>> printers on older distros:
>>
>> - is it best to connect via the usb port or parallel/printer port?
>> - why?
>> - if computer already running, can I plug printer into usb port and it
>> gets auto detected and can print straight away, or do I need to
>> reboot/restart some service?
>>
>> Thanks.

>
> Connecting a printer via usb is pretty straight-forward. Though you
> might have to restart the cups printing system (cupsys) to propagate the
> new printer status if you replug it. And ubuntu likes to mix up the usb
> ports as well. I have two printers connected via usb and need to switch
> one on before booting, because otherwise the devices will be
> irreversably switched until reboot. Probably this is a thing I was just
> too lazy to fix yet..

Ok, thanks mate. USB it is.

--
Troy Piggins - Ubuntu ascii logo candidate no 2:
,-o Ubuntu v5.10 (Breezy Badger): kernel 2.6.12-9-386,
o ) postfix 2.2.4, procmail 3.22, mutt 1.5.11i,
`-o slrn 0.9.8.1/rt (score_color patch), vim 6.4