I recently bought a Samsung CLP-320 Colour Laser Printer. This is a good quality colour laser, and the price has dropped massively of late here in the UK. It is fairly compact, and only has one paper tray. For home use, that's not a problem, you can take paper out and put paper in etc. For this and many other Samsung printers, you may need to download and install the printer driver from Samsung. Here are two places you can find it:
Samsung USA:
http://www.samsung.com/us/support/downloads/CLP-325W/XAASamsung UK:
http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/print-solutions/print-solutions/colour-printers/CLP-320/SEE/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail&tab=supportThe page loads with the "Manuals" tab active, change to the drivers tab. There are three files for Linux, download all three. Nice touch on the American site, the Linux drivers are above those of Windows
Next, open Dolphin and navigate to your Downloads folder or wherever you downloaded the drivers. You may want to move them to their own folder to keep safe, it's up to you. Wherever you put them, you need to go to that folder in Dolphin. It won't hurt if you leave them in the Downloads folder.
Right click on each of the downloaded files in turn, and select from the menu: "Extract Archive Here, Autodetect Subfolder". Once you have done this for all three files, you will find that a single new folder has been created, called "cdroot". Open this, you will see a file called autorun. But don't click on it yet.
Now you have to decide whether you want your printer interface windows to look nice-ish, or whether you want the horrible blocky interface with tiny unaliased fonts that you often get with Java apps. If you want the nicer appearance, you may have a problem but there is a workaround. Read ahead before going any further.
If you want the nicer windows, at this point open Synaptic and install "libstdc++5" - if not, don't bother.
**(place marker)
Back in the Dolphin window, right click on "autorun" > Root Menu > Run as Root. You will be offered two options screens.
1. You should check the users you wish to add to the "lp" group
2. Unless your Samsung printer is connected through an old-style parallel printer interface, check the box so that the parallel port drivers are NOT installed.
From then on, it ought to be straightforward. Except for one thing: if you have the new 1.10 version of xorg installed, you may get a crash and you are thrown back to the login screen. This will only happen if you installed libstdc++5 for the nicer appearance. If this happens, log in again, run Synaptic and uninstall libstdc++5, open Dolphin, navigate to the "cdroot" folder and try from ** again. Because the installation had begun, the Samsung drivers will now continue to install with the nicer appearance.
I would check in PCLinuxOS control centre that the driver has only installed once, and delete any duplicate drivers, especially if you got the crash!
Two slightly annoying things about the Samsung drivers:
1. Sometimes the Smart Panel opens with an error message that printers have not yet been detected. Just close it, if you actually print anything, it will work. The Smart Panel opens in "Always on Top" mode which can also be annoying sometimes. On the other hand you get a quick, compact visual indication of the printer's state, and remaining inks.
2. With some applications, selecting the Samsung printer (if you have more than one) brings up a new LPT dialog which enables you to make the same choice! At least you get some nice options on this one. If you'd gone into "Properties" on the first screen to set quality settings or something, you have to do it again! But you get used to which apps cause this to happen.
On the whole, I have to say that the driver is good, does its job, and can be installed with no recourse to the command line.
