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Software 2000 add Linux support for its color technologies

PrintMagic® provides OEMs with consistent and powerful driver solutions for the GNU/Linux platform.

OXFORD — June 26, 2001 — Software 2000 today announced support for 32-bit Intel and compatible-based Linux platforms. The PrintMagic product range of driver development toolkits for Printer OEMs has been extended to provide support for Linux 2.2- and 2.4-based kernel Linux distributions.

Now printer OEMs can quickly implement support for their color inkjets without having to create custom Linux drivers from the ground-up. They are able to take their PrintMagic Windows 2000/XP-based driver descriptions and build Linux versions in a matter of minutes. Calibrations for media and inks are immediately available for Linux delivering the same print and color quality across multiple operating system platforms. Linux users benefit from Windows color quality and OEMs benefit from substantially reduced development/calibration costs.

Linux driver development is achieved using the PrintMagic driver development platform under Windows 2000 to generate the driver user interface, choose default models and calibrate using EZ-Cal calibration tools. Once complete, the Linux driver versions for the different models are easily built using the PrintMagic Linux toolkit from the same Windows 2000 driver description. The Linux components of the toolkit run on popular distributions such as SuSE Professional 7.2 and Redhat Professional 7.1.

PrintMagic Linux drivers are supported on all major Intel 32-bit Linux platforms including those from Caldera, Debian, Redhat, SuSE and TurboLinux. Supported kernel versions are 2.2 and 2.4. GhostScript 5.5 or greater is required (default with supported Linux distributions) and the industry standard lpr/lpd UNIX printing system is utilized. All applications generating PostScript output are therefore supported no matter what application or graphical environment has been chosen (typically KDE or GNOME).

For maximum ease-of-use PrintMagic Linux drivers are installed from a convenient install program that deals automatically with installation for both lpr/lpd and Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) systems.

Using PrintMagic OEMs can therefore develop their device driver description once and generate and deliver end-user drivers for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows NT 4.0, Macintosh OS 9 and Linux platforms. PrintMagic drivers generated in this way are 100% native for the target platforms ensuring maximum native performance on each platform.

About Software 2000

Formed in 1989, Software 2000 is the world's largest independent developer of inkjet, laser printer and digital copier driver technology for the Microsoft Windows and Macintosh environments. In excess of 60 million units of the company's driver software are currently in use. The company supplies Driver Development Kits and custom driver development services to Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) customers including Canon, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, Olivetti Tecnost, Lexmark, Océ, Ricoh, Samsung, Sharp, Toshiba, Xerox, and many others. The company also supplies award-winning end-user printer driver solutions through its international retail operation Strydent Software, based in Vancouver, Canada.

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