USB and Gentoo Linux

I can't believe how good Gentoo Linux (and this would probably apply to many other distributions as well) is with USB devices. I remember in the past where connecting to Windows required different drivers. With Gentoo (and I'm currently using the 2.6.23-gentoo-r3 kernel), I've been able to just plug devices into my machine, and they get mounted to the file system as USB mass storage devices. In summary I can confirm I can connect to the following:

• Sony DSC-V3 (see older posts in this blog for this)
  
• Olympus mju 795 SW
• Nokia 6300
• Sony PSP
• Various USB thumb drives ranging from 256MB to 2GB
  

Everything just works - nothing to do on the operating system side. The only thing a user may need to do is to switch the device into USB mode.

Secondly, I can also confirm that with CUPS, the HP 8230 works with the hp drivers. Full colour printing, and it can also be used as a device to mount photo storage devices (eg. Compact Flash, Sony Memory Stick, etc...). The printer also attaches to my Gentoo machine via a USB cable. Just make sure when you're configuring the kernel (if it is not already compiled for you), to enable:

CONFIG_USB_PRINTER=y

Feel free to get in touch with me if you've got any queries.