11 ms·

I've noticed that printing is still one of the poorest UX aspects of *nix/OSS and regularly seems to suffer from errors so egregious that they can only be attri

I've noticed that printing is still one of the poorest UX aspects of *nix/OSS and regularly seems to suffer from errors so egregious that they can only be attributed to OSS devs not dogfooding these features. I'm assuming they just don't print much (I mean, we ALL print less than 20 years ago, but all the more reason to test these features which, when you need them to work you REALLY need them to work).

ultramancool 10y ago
Perhaps you're thinking back to the days of manually configuring CUPS? Any recent printer I've used has just been plug it in and hit print. A better experience than Windows in terms of included drivers and bonjour support too.
- dbcurtis 10y ago
  No, you've simply been lucky.
  - chrisfosterelli 10y ago
    I can say my experience matches the above posters as well. Printing in Ubuntu works better than OSX and Windows for the 4 different printers I use regularly.
    - kiwijamo 10y ago
      My experience with both OSX and Windows is that you just need to plug a printer in and it just works. Can't remember that ever happening with BSD/Linux in my experience. :( But it sounds like things have improved which is good to know.
      - cyphar 10y ago
        In Arch Linux (and this is Arch Linux) all I ever had to do was install avahi (explained in the docs) and CUPS would find the printers automatically. On the other hand, I know of several cases where an OS X machine would cause unauthenticated printers on the same network (without any printing being done by the user) to start printing hundreds of pages of what looked like service discovery packets.
      - Grishnakh 10y ago
        >My experience with both OSX and Windows is that you just need to plug a printer in and it just works. It's never been that way for Windows: you've obviously never used a network printer in a large office.
- Adaptive 10y ago
  CUPS is better, no doubt. And from a sysadmin perspective CUPS is great, but there are still crazy gotchas. Part of this is the byzantine config of network discovery, CUPS, driver sources, etc. A big part of the problem is the pieces may be there but distros have done a mediocre job getting everything together on this in the best way for the user.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  I agree completely. I set up a relative with Linux Mint KDE 17.3 a couple weeks ago and even I was surprised at how easy it was to set up the two printers he wanted to use: one was an old 2003-vintage LaserJet 1012 personal-sized laser printer with USB, the other a newer (I'm guessing 4yo) HP color inkjet of some kind that was WiFi-connected. For the first, I just plugged in the USB cable and a print queue was immediately and automatically set up; I didn't have to do anything. For the latter, I just went into the printer configuration utility, let it search the network, it found the printer and told me its model name/number, then I selected the appropriate driver and printed a test page. No driver downloads, no problems. By contrast, I had a contract job a year or so ago at a large company where I was given a Win7 laptop and tried to connect to a big Ricoh laser printer. I spent hours messing around with driver downloads trying to get that to work. I finally had to call IT and they sent someone over, and he couldn't get it to work either; he finally found some crazy work-around which I've totally forgotten the details of now. The only real problem I see with printing on Linux now is that, sometimes, there's multiple CUPS drivers for the same printer (foomatic, hpijs, Postscript, etc.), so it won't automatically pick one and it's not clear which is the best so you might have to just try one and see if it works. Most likely, they all work, but some might have additional features. HP printers are probably the best, though, since they seem to explicitly support Linux (such as with their hpijs drivers). If all printer makers had this level of support, and they cleaned up the redundant/competing drivers, there wouldn't be complaints.
dublinben 10y ago
In my experience it is the exact opposite. My Linux computers are always able to quickly connect and print to any printer I point them towards. I have never had as many problems as I have had when using Windows or OS X.
- snuxoll 10y ago
  I can't say it's been any "easier" to connect to my Brother MFC-J4420DW on Fedora as it is on Windows, but it's no harder. Download the installation script from Brother, run it, it asks me for the hostname of my printer and I'm up and running.
  - chrisseaton 10y ago
    > Download the installation script from Brother, run it, it asks me for the hostname of my printer and I'm up and running. But this is already sounding archaic and difficult isn't it? Just download and run an installation script? Give it the host name? No way a nontechnical user is going to be able to do either of those things. Why doesn't the printer just appear like it does on my Mac? I'm not even sure what my printer's host name is so I wouldn't even be able to do that step myself!
    - kazinator 10y ago
      However worse that installation may be on Linux compared to your Mac, it pales in comparison to the atrocious Windows experience. "Download this .ZIP file from the Brother website. Then unpack it somewhere. Go through these dialog boxes from the Devices and Printers control panel. Be sure to uncheck such and such before clicking next in such and such. Then at this point, choose "Have Disk" and browse for where you unzipped the drivers and find the ".inf" file in there somewhere." If the printer is on a dynamically assigned IP address, chances are that the port created for it will use a hard-coded entry like "192.168.1.13" which will break. The DHCP host name requested by the printer can be used, but you will have to manually enter that. It is some awful serial number: a mixture of random digits and letters. It's better to navigate to the printer's web firmware first, and rename it to some human-readable name, then edit the printer port to match.
guard-of-terra 10y ago
In my experience printing in Linux has been pretty solid for at least the last 5 years or so. CUPS is CUPS, drivers are plentiful and one apt-get away, UIs get better. Of course I'm limited to occassional document or a few tickets.
amluto 10y ago
One of these days, someone may give me a credible explanation of why printing involves a systemwide daemon, but I kind of doubt it. I'd love to see a rearchitecting of the whole mess such that the whole print daemon runs in in a sandbox with user privileges.
- icebraining 10y ago
  How would you avoid having a common print queue, when all the documents can't fit in the printer memory?
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Have the printer act as a server to which each of the sandboxed print queues talks directly, seeking permission to send data, and let the printer handle flow control. Not saying this is necessarily a good idea, but it avoids a system-wide print queue, all you need at the system level is a service locator to let you know where the printer is that you need to contact.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Ostensibly, you're right, but then the answer to "why do we need a system daemon" is "because Linux distros don't control the firmware of all printers nor can they tell manufacturers what to do."
      - mark-r 10y ago
        In the case where a printer isn't intelligent enough to act as its own server, you could create another daemon whose sole function is to control access to the printer. Separation of concerns: formatting of pages and access control need not be the same piece of software.
        pjc50 10y ago
        you could create another daemon whose sole function is to control access to the printer You could call it 'lpd' and then the circle would be complete.

ultramancool 10y ago

Perhaps you're thinking back to the days of manually configuring CUPS? Any recent printer I've used has just been plug it in and hit print. A better experience than Windows in terms of included drivers and bonjour support too.

dbcurtis 10y ago
No, you've simply been lucky.
- chrisfosterelli 10y ago
  I can say my experience matches the above posters as well. Printing in Ubuntu works better than OSX and Windows for the 4 different printers I use regularly.
  - kiwijamo 10y ago
    My experience with both OSX and Windows is that you just need to plug a printer in and it just works. Can't remember that ever happening with BSD/Linux in my experience. :( But it sounds like things have improved which is good to know.
    - cyphar 10y ago
      In Arch Linux (and this is Arch Linux) all I ever had to do was install avahi (explained in the docs) and CUPS would find the printers automatically. On the other hand, I know of several cases where an OS X machine would cause unauthenticated printers on the same network (without any printing being done by the user) to start printing hundreds of pages of what looked like service discovery packets.
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      >My experience with both OSX and Windows is that you just need to plug a printer in and it just works. It's never been that way for Windows: you've obviously never used a network printer in a large office.
Adaptive 10y ago
CUPS is better, no doubt. And from a sysadmin perspective CUPS is great, but there are still crazy gotchas. Part of this is the byzantine config of network discovery, CUPS, driver sources, etc. A big part of the problem is the pieces may be there but distros have done a mediocre job getting everything together on this in the best way for the user.
Grishnakh 10y ago
I agree completely. I set up a relative with Linux Mint KDE 17.3 a couple weeks ago and even I was surprised at how easy it was to set up the two printers he wanted to use: one was an old 2003-vintage LaserJet 1012 personal-sized laser printer with USB, the other a newer (I'm guessing 4yo) HP color inkjet of some kind that was WiFi-connected. For the first, I just plugged in the USB cable and a print queue was immediately and automatically set up; I didn't have to do anything. For the latter, I just went into the printer configuration utility, let it search the network, it found the printer and told me its model name/number, then I selected the appropriate driver and printed a test page. No driver downloads, no problems. By contrast, I had a contract job a year or so ago at a large company where I was given a Win7 laptop and tried to connect to a big Ricoh laser printer. I spent hours messing around with driver downloads trying to get that to work. I finally had to call IT and they sent someone over, and he couldn't get it to work either; he finally found some crazy work-around which I've totally forgotten the details of now. The only real problem I see with printing on Linux now is that, sometimes, there's multiple CUPS drivers for the same printer (foomatic, hpijs, Postscript, etc.), so it won't automatically pick one and it's not clear which is the best so you might have to just try one and see if it works. Most likely, they all work, but some might have additional features. HP printers are probably the best, though, since they seem to explicitly support Linux (such as with their hpijs drivers). If all printer makers had this level of support, and they cleaned up the redundant/competing drivers, there wouldn't be complaints.

dublinben 10y ago

In my experience it is the exact opposite. My Linux computers are always able to quickly connect and print to any printer I point them towards. I have never had as many problems as I have had when using Windows or OS X.

snuxoll 10y ago
I can't say it's been any "easier" to connect to my Brother MFC-J4420DW on Fedora as it is on Windows, but it's no harder. Download the installation script from Brother, run it, it asks me for the hostname of my printer and I'm up and running.
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  > Download the installation script from Brother, run it, it asks me for the hostname of my printer and I'm up and running. But this is already sounding archaic and difficult isn't it? Just download and run an installation script? Give it the host name? No way a nontechnical user is going to be able to do either of those things. Why doesn't the printer just appear like it does on my Mac? I'm not even sure what my printer's host name is so I wouldn't even be able to do that step myself!
  - kazinator 10y ago
    However worse that installation may be on Linux compared to your Mac, it pales in comparison to the atrocious Windows experience. "Download this .ZIP file from the Brother website. Then unpack it somewhere. Go through these dialog boxes from the Devices and Printers control panel. Be sure to uncheck such and such before clicking next in such and such. Then at this point, choose "Have Disk" and browse for where you unzipped the drivers and find the ".inf" file in there somewhere." If the printer is on a dynamically assigned IP address, chances are that the port created for it will use a hard-coded entry like "192.168.1.13" which will break. The DHCP host name requested by the printer can be used, but you will have to manually enter that. It is some awful serial number: a mixture of random digits and letters. It's better to navigate to the printer's web firmware first, and rename it to some human-readable name, then edit the printer port to match.

guard-of-terra 10y ago

In my experience printing in Linux has been pretty solid for at least the last 5 years or so. CUPS is CUPS, drivers are plentiful and one apt-get away, UIs get better. Of course I'm limited to occassional document or a few tickets.

amluto 10y ago

One of these days, someone may give me a credible explanation of why printing involves a systemwide daemon, but I kind of doubt it. I'd love to see a rearchitecting of the whole mess such that the whole print daemon runs in in a sandbox with user privileges.

icebraining 10y ago
How would you avoid having a common print queue, when all the documents can't fit in the printer memory?
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Have the printer act as a server to which each of the sandboxed print queues talks directly, seeking permission to send data, and let the printer handle flow control. Not saying this is necessarily a good idea, but it avoids a system-wide print queue, all you need at the system level is a service locator to let you know where the printer is that you need to contact.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Ostensibly, you're right, but then the answer to "why do we need a system daemon" is "because Linux distros don't control the firmware of all printers nor can they tell manufacturers what to do."
    - mark-r 10y ago
      In the case where a printer isn't intelligent enough to act as its own server, you could create another daemon whose sole function is to control access to the printer. Separation of concerns: formatting of pages and access control need not be the same piece of software.
      - pjc50 10y ago
        you could create another daemon whose sole function is to control access to the printer You could call it 'lpd' and then the circle would be complete.