OpenSolaris™ Bible

Chapter 5. Printers and Peripherals

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Printers, scanners, and webcams

• Digital cameras

• Audio devices

• Serial ports

• Power management and UPSs

• Device drivers

If your computer system consisted solely of a CPU, disk drive, keyboard, and display, it would be useful, of course, but many other devices can be used to extend the tasks your system is capable of performing. The generic term used in the computer industry for these devices is peripherals.

Printers and scanners enable you to convert between electronic and paper documents. Digital cameras enable you to record and share images of all types. Webcams and audio headsets enable you to use the Internet for cheap video conferencing and telephony. When equipped with all of these devices, your computer system becomes an essential tool for many parts of your life. In this chapter, you'll learn how to use these and other peripherals with OpenSolaris.

Note

Storage devices are discussed in Chapter 7.

Printing

Printers are among the oldest type of peripherals for computer systems. During the era of mainframes and batch processing, users didn't directly interact with computer systems often; instead, programs were submitted on media such as tape or punch cards, executed, and the results written to other media or printed on a line printer. Modern computer systems are interactive, of course, and mostly use printers that are based on laser or ink-jet technologies that can produce high-resolution graphics and color not imagined with the old line ...