4 ms·

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 h

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.
    - akira2501 10y ago
      > 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 [...] Personally, I've never understood this. Are there a lot of admins who let their printers take IPs from the DHCP pool?
      - jlgaddis 10y ago
        I learned years ago to always assign IP addresses to printers via DHCP but to set up reservations for them so that the IP doesn't change. Of course, this was at the time that configuring an IP address manually on a printer involved a two-line LCD screen (if you were lucky) and clicking buttons on the front to increment each octet of the IP address by one each time you clicked. Re-addressing a couple hundred printers was not fun when each of them was configured manually via the front panel.
        kazinator 10y ago
        > clicking buttons on the front to increment each octet of the IP address by one each time you clicked. That is exactly how, just over a week ago, I gave that brand new printer its Wi-Fi password: moving a cursor and incrementing through a character set. Just like naming the presets on a Yamaha audio effects processor I bought in 1989.
      - jpindar 10y ago
        There are a lot of people who install a printer despite not having access to the router.
      - Spivak 10y ago
        > Are there a lot of admins who let their printers take IPs from the DHCP pool? You mean just about every single home network? Although, in an enterprise setting, if you count DHCP reservations then that's what we do, having our whole office use them has greatly simplified our network configuration. I could imagine a world where printers had a built-in DDNS client which would make them truly plug-and-play in an office but that's probably more complicated than it's worth.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    Exactly. On my Linux systems, it's just like your Mac (and considering that CUPS is owned by Apple and used on Macs just like on Linux, this makes sense): you just let the printer appear when it searches the local network, and select one of the already-loaded drivers. Why would you need to download some "installation script" from the manufacturer? How ridiculous.
- kazinator 10y ago
  I just got a Brother LED printer: the HL-3170CDW. Very nice printer. Works fine on with one 64 bit Win-7 system. With another system, a 32 bit Win-7, it won't work at all. Printing a test page fails with 0x000000D, and no application can print. (The printer is seen, and its status can be monitored and so on, but Windows just won't print!) This is whether or not it is on Wi-Fi or USB. I tried three versions of the drivers, and every possible remedy: I applied a Microsoft HotFix for repairing Win7/SP1 systems. I ran sfc /scannow. I run chkdsk /F on the C: drive. (The machine is an older system, but the SMART info shows that the drive is in perfect health: low temperature, no bad sectors.) I reset Windows Update and got it into a sane state. I went through every possible trouble-shooting procedure that could be googled up that could be related to the issue. Fixed things in the registry according to various steps. No dice.

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.
  - akira2501 10y ago
    > 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 [...] Personally, I've never understood this. Are there a lot of admins who let their printers take IPs from the DHCP pool?
    - jlgaddis 10y ago
      I learned years ago to always assign IP addresses to printers via DHCP but to set up reservations for them so that the IP doesn't change. Of course, this was at the time that configuring an IP address manually on a printer involved a two-line LCD screen (if you were lucky) and clicking buttons on the front to increment each octet of the IP address by one each time you clicked. Re-addressing a couple hundred printers was not fun when each of them was configured manually via the front panel.
      - kazinator 10y ago
        > clicking buttons on the front to increment each octet of the IP address by one each time you clicked. That is exactly how, just over a week ago, I gave that brand new printer its Wi-Fi password: moving a cursor and incrementing through a character set. Just like naming the presets on a Yamaha audio effects processor I bought in 1989.
    - jpindar 10y ago
      There are a lot of people who install a printer despite not having access to the router.
    - Spivak 10y ago
      > Are there a lot of admins who let their printers take IPs from the DHCP pool? You mean just about every single home network? Although, in an enterprise setting, if you count DHCP reservations then that's what we do, having our whole office use them has greatly simplified our network configuration. I could imagine a world where printers had a built-in DDNS client which would make them truly plug-and-play in an office but that's probably more complicated than it's worth.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  Exactly. On my Linux systems, it's just like your Mac (and considering that CUPS is owned by Apple and used on Macs just like on Linux, this makes sense): you just let the printer appear when it searches the local network, and select one of the already-loaded drivers. Why would you need to download some "installation script" from the manufacturer? How ridiculous.
kazinator 10y ago
I just got a Brother LED printer: the HL-3170CDW. Very nice printer. Works fine on with one 64 bit Win-7 system. With another system, a 32 bit Win-7, it won't work at all. Printing a test page fails with 0x000000D, and no application can print. (The printer is seen, and its status can be monitored and so on, but Windows just won't print!) This is whether or not it is on Wi-Fi or USB. I tried three versions of the drivers, and every possible remedy: I applied a Microsoft HotFix for repairing Win7/SP1 systems. I ran sfc /scannow. I run chkdsk /F on the C: drive. (The machine is an older system, but the SMART info shows that the drive is in perfect health: low temperature, no bad sectors.) I reset Windows Update and got it into a sane state. I went through every possible trouble-shooting procedure that could be googled up that could be related to the issue. Fixed things in the registry according to various steps. No dice.