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I wouldn't say it's less trouble than Windows, just different trouble that people are not used to. Trying to get my 2013 Brother printer/scanner to work in Ubun

I wouldn't say it's less trouble than Windows, just different trouble that people are not used to. Trying to get my 2013 Brother printer/scanner to work in Ubuntu involved tweaking and running shell scripts found on Stackoverflow. Desktops should just work, yet sadly none of them really do.

stefanfisk 8y ago
this is what keeps a lot of people with Apple, their OS generally does "just work" for everyday stuff, even if it is far from perfect.
dmoy 8y ago
If printer was my only problem with linux desktops, I'd be so happy. My terminal and/or browser windows will randomly flicker a few times a day, for no apparent reason. Nothing stops this short of a restart. Oh yea, and then when my computer restarts, sometimes half the screen is strobing. This is persistent across monitors and apparently video cards. Sometimes moving my mouse across a terminal or browser window will cause it to flicker a lot. Last week one computer stopped responding to input devices (ssh was still fine). Half the games I play don't work on linux, without resorting to some very ambitious scripting and configuration. And even then, most of them don't really work, due to performance issues. Don't even get me started on the joystick :\ It's a lot better than it used to be, for instance my second monitor doesn't randomly go completely haywire anymore. And audio kinda mostly works usually. Same hardware on Windows though? No problems at all.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Sounds like you need intel graphics.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    Yeah, because nothing says "I'm a real computer operating system" like forcing the user to use the weakest GPUs on the market.
    - mixmastamyk 8y ago
      It's the manufacturers fault they (might) not have invested in their drivers. Intel is strongest in power savings, drivers, and generally not having to give a shit. Depends what you care about, Mr. Idiot.
  - dmoy 8y ago
    For at least one of the boxes it isn't an option because the xeon chip doesn't have a gpu inside it. So, separate video card only.
- mg794613 8y ago
  I had the flicker on my monitors, switching from 60hz to 59hz stopped. Maybe give that a try?
  - dmoy 8y ago
    It's not a whole monitor flicker. Just specific windows flicker. Like my terminal will suddenly strobe at 10Hz+.
- JdeBP 8y ago
  There are all sorts of possibilities, and it isn't necessarily even the hardware. For example: I had a screen flicker that was down to something repeatedly trying to start up GNOME Shell when the desktop was not GNOME.
  - dmoy 8y ago
    Yea I'm relatively certain it isn't the hardware.
JdeBP 8y ago
Interestingly, Brother provides CUPS drivers for a fairly large proportion of its range, larger than the support that is packaged out of the box by free operating systems. It provides both DEB and RPM packaged drivers. For example: * https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=au&lang=en&prod=mfcj6530dw_us_eu_as&os=128 https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=au&lang=... The downside is that they are closed source binaries. For Linux only. And only 32-bit. Recently I had to switch over printing from a FreeBSD machine to a Debian 9 machine because there was no portable driver and nothing supporting the particular printer range out of the box in the CUPS packages. Then printing simply failed silently with printouts apparently vanishing out of the print queue into thin air (apart from an obscure report of 0 bytes printed in a log file when debug mode is on) because I didn't have the 32-bit C and C++ GNU libraries installed on the 64-bit machine. I went on a couple of wild goose chases diagnosing that one. I was halfway tempted to write it up for Unix StackExchange.

stefanfisk 8y ago

this is what keeps a lot of people with Apple, their OS generally does "just work" for everyday stuff, even if it is far from perfect.

dmoy 8y ago

If printer was my only problem with linux desktops, I'd be so happy. My terminal and/or browser windows will randomly flicker a few times a day, for no apparent reason. Nothing stops this short of a restart. Oh yea, and then when my computer restarts, sometimes half the screen is strobing. This is persistent across monitors and apparently video cards. Sometimes moving my mouse across a terminal or browser window will cause it to flicker a lot. Last week one computer stopped responding to input devices (ssh was still fine). Half the games I play don't work on linux, without resorting to some very ambitious scripting and configuration. And even then, most of them don't really work, due to performance issues. Don't even get me started on the joystick :\ It's a lot better than it used to be, for instance my second monitor doesn't randomly go completely haywire anymore. And audio kinda mostly works usually. Same hardware on Windows though? No problems at all.

mixmastamyk 8y ago
Sounds like you need intel graphics.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  Yeah, because nothing says "I'm a real computer operating system" like forcing the user to use the weakest GPUs on the market.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    It's the manufacturers fault they (might) not have invested in their drivers. Intel is strongest in power savings, drivers, and generally not having to give a shit. Depends what you care about, Mr. Idiot.
- dmoy 8y ago
  For at least one of the boxes it isn't an option because the xeon chip doesn't have a gpu inside it. So, separate video card only.
mg794613 8y ago
I had the flicker on my monitors, switching from 60hz to 59hz stopped. Maybe give that a try?
- dmoy 8y ago
  It's not a whole monitor flicker. Just specific windows flicker. Like my terminal will suddenly strobe at 10Hz+.
JdeBP 8y ago
There are all sorts of possibilities, and it isn't necessarily even the hardware. For example: I had a screen flicker that was down to something repeatedly trying to start up GNOME Shell when the desktop was not GNOME.
- dmoy 8y ago
  Yea I'm relatively certain it isn't the hardware.

JdeBP 8y ago

Interestingly, Brother provides CUPS drivers for a fairly large proportion of its range, larger than the support that is packaged out of the box by free operating systems. It provides both DEB and RPM packaged drivers. For example: * https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=au&lang=en&prod=mfcj6530dw_us_eu_as&os=128 https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=au&lang=... The downside is that they are closed source binaries. For Linux only. And only 32-bit. Recently I had to switch over printing from a FreeBSD machine to a Debian 9 machine because there was no portable driver and nothing supporting the particular printer range out of the box in the CUPS packages. Then printing simply failed silently with printouts apparently vanishing out of the print queue into thin air (apart from an obscure report of 0 bytes printed in a log file when debug mode is on) because I didn't have the 32-bit C and C++ GNU libraries installed on the 64-bit machine. I went on a couple of wild goose chases diagnosing that one. I was halfway tempted to write it up for Unix StackExchange.