It will be the first automatic download for the free computer operating system.
Seiko Epson Corporation and AVASYS Corporation today unveiled plans for a service that will enable the automatic downloading of printer drivers, by connecting an Epson inkjet printer to a personal computer running the Linux operating system.
Epson describes this as an industry first for a printer maker. The companies, both based in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, announced that the service is due to start at the end of April 2011, enabling automatic downloads of printer drivers for a total of 268 Epson inkjet printer models launched since 2005.
Currently, in order to use Epson printers on Linux PCs, it is necessary to manually download the appropriate driver from the AVASYS website. In order to improve the user experience for Epson printer owners using the Linux OS, Epson and AVASYS collaborated with the Linux Foundation to make the automatic printer driver download service possible. As a result, the automatic download function has been included in the Linux distribution “Ubuntu 11.04” due to be released at the end of April 2011. For this distribution, users will be able to automatically download the driver just by connecting the printer, enabling much simpler set up.
Till Kamppeter, leader of the OpenPrinting project, commented, “I am proud that the automatic driver download feature can start to benefit users’ lives with the new 11.04 release of Ubuntu and the inkjet printer drivers from Epson and AVASYS. This will be the first time that a Linux system downloads distribution-independent driver packages triggered simply by connecting the appropriate device. This makes printer setup and printing “just work”, and faster and easier than on most other operating systems. I hope this will be a sign for other distributions and hardware manufacturers, too, especially also for other types of hardware, not only printers. This way Linux can become one of the easiest to use operating systems.”
Epson and AVASYS say that they will continue to work together on convenient and reliable printing operations for the Linux OS.