Samsung Installer Information
If you are planning to work with the Samsung driver directly, you should usually download it directly from Samsung or HP - but that is no longer possible for these files, with one possible exception. Therefore, for those who want the versions that match what I'm using in the repository and/or are having trouble finding an "official" download that is appropriate for their printer (although a different model download usually works fine), you can download selected versions here:
If you find yourself with some need to install manually instead of using the repository, please share why this is so and I will attempt to modify the repository to address the problem. (Even non-Debian users can convert the packages and install them manually.) As far as I know, there is no advantage to installing directly and many disadvantages.
You are on your own if you choose to use these versions. Samsung at least nominally provides support for issues you may experience with them, and there are too many variables for me to address the many problems. If you choose to install using one of these installers rather than repository, you can certainly still post to the forums here for help. However, my first suggestion will always be to install using the repository, which controls for and addresses many of the issues you may encounter with the Samsung installer.
Uninstallation Instructions
If you want to know specific details of what files are installed or how to uninstall particular versions of the driver installed the Samsung way, see the page specific for the version that you downloaded and installed:
Update for Driver2 (1.00.xx)
The problems below seem largely resolved with the new style driver released by Samsung in 2013. The only significant remaining issues are that a few non-critical files (such as the ppd files) end up with executable permissions, there is no uninstall routine available if the original download from Samsung is deleted (the uninstall script is not installed), and there are still a couple of quirks regarding how the scanner system is set up in /etc/. Otherwise, use of this repository instead of the Samsung installer for that version is largely a matter of preference or convenience. The Samsung installer has no extraneous libraries and places everything neatly into /opt/, with links as needed from the /usr/ directories to /opt/, and uninstalls cleanly. Most users can use the 1.00.xx Samsung installer directly without need for this repository.
General Problems With the Samsung Installer/Uninstaller
Files Left Behind
The uninstaller can't tell if certain files should be deleted or not, and so usually leaves them in /usr/lib:
- /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3* (provided by package libtiff3, which was replaced by libtiff4 in 2005, but is required for ImageManger)
- /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5* (provided by package libstdc++5) (all versions before 4.01.xx)
- /usr/lib/libcups.so (symbolic link to libcups.so.2)
- /usr/lib/libqui.so* (provided by package libqt3-mt) (all versions before 4.00.xx)
- /usr/lib/libqt-mt* (provided by package libqt3-mt) (all versions before 4.00.xx)
The Installer and Uninstaller Routinely Fail
Depending on the exact combination of Qt3 and Qt4 libraries on your computer, one of several errors could occur when trying to run the uninstaller that results in the inability to automatically remove the driver. This is more of a problem with the v2.00.xx and v3.00.xx installers than it is for later versions. There are also issues with various installer and uninstaller versions if the path contains any spaces.
Inappropriate Printer Selection
Many versions of the installer automatically install a printer, which may or may not match your actual printer model. In some cases, this installed printer does not actually work and needs to removed, then your actual printer configured again.
Replacement of /usr/bin/lpr
Prior to the 4.01.xx installer, the Samsung installer moves /usr/bin/lpr to /usr/bin/lpr.org and writes /usr/bin/lpr as a link to /opt/Samsung/mfp/bin/slpr, which (a) breaks the cups-bsd (or cupsys-bsd) packages, (b) can itself be overwritten when the CUPS package is updated and it writes back to /usr/bin/lpr, and (c) breaks non-graphical and automated applications, because slpr requires a graphical environment and user intervention.
Parallel Port Interference
The Samsung installer writes parallel port information to /etc/modprobe.conf, which then blocks reading of /etc/modprobe.d/, and so all blacklists or other hardware support configurations present in /etc/modprobe.d/ are ignored. In addition, computers without physical parallel ports sometimes exhibit odd behavior due to this forced parallel support.
Inappropriate Permissions and Ownership
Many of the files installed to /usr/lib/ end up with 777 permissions: i.e., world-writable and world-executable. Even non-executable library files are given these permissions. Other files occasionally have inappropriate group ownership assigned. The result is a possible security risk to your system. Both of these issues vary quite a bit, not only with the particular installer version but even within apparently identical downloads from Samsung.
Apparent Unavailability for Many Printers
Samsung has recently decreased the number of printers that they provide an official driver for, even though they do in fact still support them (for example, the CLP-550N no longer provides a Linux driver for download at the Samsung USA site, even though it had for years prior to that point and the new drivers still work). In addition, many different versions of the Linux driver are present on their site, and exactly which version you get depends on which printer model you search for.
Library Conflicts
There are occasional library conflicts with modern Linux distributions, although not as bad as with the v2 or earlier v3 installers. I have largely fixed these in my packages available through the repository, but you may run into problems if you install directly from Samsung and are using either a brand-new or somewhat older distribution version. Known potential sources of conflict if you perform a manual install include libc6, qt3 libraries, libstdc++5, libnetsnmp, and libtiff.