Having been trying to get my Dell All In One Photo 926 printer working under Ubuntu (on my Dell laptop!), I ran into problems. Dell do not seem to have written Linux drivers for the All In One series printers (or perhaps not any of their printers?). This lead me to an interesting discovery – If you go to Dell’s website, you can order a laptop with Ubuntu installed, if you then click on the Accessorize My Dell tab, they offer several of the All In One series as options.
Now this is interesting, either Dell have written some Linux drivers for these printers, which they haven’t released into the public domain, or they are selling printers to go with their Ubuntu laptops that won’t work (apart from going down the VirtualBox route, which isn’t really a proper solution).
I decided to email Josh Claman Vice President and General Manager, Dell Channels – EMEA, to see what he could do about this. Here is my email to Josh Claman & his response. I will post updates here with all of my communications with Dell on this subject.
My email:
Dear Josh Claman,
I notice that Dell are now selling laptops with Ubuntu installed. I praise this as a great move, however I notice that when you configure your laptop, you can add a printer, the ‘Photo 928 All In One’, but there do not seem to be any Linux drivers available for this printer for download from your site! I have made the move full time to Ubuntu this year & I have a ‘Photo 926 All In One’, which I cannot get working under Ubuntu, as there do not seem to be any Linux drivers available for it. Please can you let me know are there Linux drivers for the 928, which you are not making publicly available, or is this an oversight on Dell’s part & you are in fact shipping a printer which will not work with the Ubuntu laptop selected to go with it on your site? If you do have Linux drivers which work with the ‘All In One Photo’ series, please could you make them publicly available, so that Linux/Ubuntu users can get their Dell printers working. I look forward to your reply.
Many thanks
Paul Taylor
Josh Claman’s reply:
Paul – thank you for your e-mail. I will ask a member of our team to
contact you, asap to discuss this further and keep me appraised of your
situation.
Regards
Josh