This post could have been titled "how to install brother's drivers on 64bit Linux" .. but that was too long and boring.

So yesterday I bought a MFC-295CN. It's basically a cheap all in one printer and for 79$ you can't really ask for more.

• it prints black or color (obviously)
• it serves as a fax, copier, scanner
• it's network ready (wireless/wired)

So far I had only installed high-end printers on linux and it was the first time I plugged a printer which was not instantly found by Ubuntu.

So I started searching for a Linux driver for this printer and found it where i least expected it .. on brother's website.

My jaw dropped (literally) when I saw all their drivers where released under what seems to be their own Free Open Source license;

Brother grants User a non-exclusive license: to reproduce and/or distribute (via Internet or in any other manner) the Software. Further, Brother grants User a non-exclusive license to modify, alter, translate or otherwise prepare derivative works of the Software and to reproduce and distribute (via Internet or in any other manner) such modification, alteration, translation or other derivative works for any purpose.

They basically say; "do whatever you want with those drivers, we are just not responsible for anything bad that could happen".

Well, thanks bro !

I have to admit I spent last night trying to make those driver work because I have a AMD64 and the drivers were all compiled for the 32bit architecture ..

But I finally figured out;

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture mfc295cncupswrapper-1.1.2-2.i386.deb

Then I rebooted, printed a test page, et voila.