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Most of printer drivers are BS. I also bought a printer after lockdown, and had to spent hours to do research on the printer model that's interested me: Mac & l
by a012 6y ago
Most of printer drivers are BS. I also bought a printer after lockdown, and had to spent hours to do research on the printer model that's interested me: Mac & linux compatible. The result is Brother is the most reliable and less BS than the rest printers. In the end, I bought a wireless Brother printer, and you can throw whatever cartridge in to it.
- alpanka 6y agoHP laserjets have pretty good Linux support, it's usually plugnplay on Ubuntu.
- pizza234 6y agoConfirmed, although it should be noted that some may require a blob ("Binary plugin") in order to print and/or scanning (mosts frequently scanning). See table here: https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing/binary_plugin.html https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing/bina.... > Most Linux distributions include HPLIP with their software, but most do not include the plug-in This is not exactly pleasing for open source enthusiasts (me included).
- vetinari 6y agoThat proprietary plugin for scanning provides WSD and eSCL (AirScan) support. However, your distro might use recent enough sane and sane-airscan, that does support these protocols. Due to recommendation here on HN, I've been checking Brother laser printers. They also require installing a proprietary package from the manufacturer, and a proprietary tool for the print queue setup.
- pizza234 6y agoI've tested two HP laser all-in-one models (MFP series), and the scanner did not work at all without the plugin. But I have no experience with other models.
- vetinari 6y agoHP Color LaserJet MFP M181fw here. Year ago, the plugin was needed for the scanning. Today, it works out of the box with Fedora 33, no plugin (I'm using eSCL mode). Fedora 33 ships with sane 1.0.31, sane-airscan 0.99.18 and hplip 3.20.9.
- tomatocracy 6y agoIs that a more recent thing for Brother? I have one (probably c5 years old) and although there are proprietary drivers if you want them, it will happily accept PCL or even PostScript (PostScript is slower though) over IPP and it has a basic interface on its http port (toner levels, page counts, etc). It wasn't the lowest-end model but it wasn't super-expensive either. I think the next model down was the same but wouldn't take PostScript.
- vetinari 6y agoI was checking Brother MFC-L2712DW and found this: https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=eu_ot&lang=en&prod=mfcl2712dw_eu&os=128 https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=eu_ot&la... Can anyone confirm, that this is not necessary and it works OOB with software shipped with distributions? (I need it to work with Ubuntu 20.04 and future LTS releases, preferably without anything that would bite me two years down the line).
- tomatocracy 6y agoI don't have this model but it's likely to work fine for printing - the specs say it accepts PCL and there are decent profiles shipped now with the normal Linux distros for Brother printers. You might need to select a different model which is "close" to get optimal output and/or experiment a bit. Scanning is more difficult to tell but it may well work using SANE's AirScan driver, called eSCL as it looks like this model supports AirScan/AirPrint scanning. This shouldn't need the proprietary drivers as I understand it. The next models up (MFC-273x and higher) look like they support scanning and saving directly to an FTP server or CIFS/SMB share on your network which wouldn't need a driver so that might be a more surefire option.
- vetinari 6y agoThanks.
- cesarb 6y agoI prefer the list at https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing/supported_devices/index https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing/supp... which shows which models do not need the blob.
- taneliv 6y agoI have had nothing but problems with HP LaserJet CP1025nw color on Ubuntu in the last five years or so (and on Arch I could not make it print anything). Bought it based on similar comments, so buyer beware. The only thing that has worked (at all) has been the instructions and software from http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/ http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/, even if the site looks way too sketchy to my liking. Recently, though, even those drivers have started misbehaving and do not print the last centimeter or two on the page---the solution is to select upside down printing in the print settings.
- ghostDancer 6y agoThe zjs printers on Linux are a PITA. I have a LaserJet 1020. And I have had times where it worked flawlessly, then a change in a kernel module or anything else and stoped working but not always only sometimes, sometimes the distribution drivers worked, others only the ones in the ffo2zjs page ones, so I had to change from one to the other . Now it looks like they are more stable and only had problems once when someone made a mistake in an update of the driver it was solved in less than a week once located.
- zajio1am 6y agoUnless it is a printer+scanner combo, which requires some proprietary part that is downloaded by hplip package from HP web, and causes random breakage during upgrades.
- drtillberg 6y agoLinux support for HP requires some HP daemon running at all times and in my experience fails in edge cases where a standard Linux integration would not. I also don't like their logo on my Linux task bar, no one else requires that to make a printer 'go'. Recently got a Xerox, it's better.
- vetinari 6y agoIt does not require that; just some users install it for some reason. I do have a LaserJet at home; all I did was to connect it to the network and it popped up in the printer dialogs on Linux and Mac machines. On Linux, standard cups+hplip that's in the default package set in most distributions does the job.
- fl0wenol 6y agoHP's out-of-the-box instructions are terrible and assume your printer might not be on your network. Any JetDirect-enabled HP printer requires no local process/service on your workstations or other devices. You just throw PS/PCL at port 9100, or maybe IPP at 631, and install a reasonably-recent PPD for your printer's model line (this is the point of installing hplip from your distro). There isn't a driver per-se as the OS is responsible for creating the postscript and/or PCL from your document, just as it would for making a PDF. If you can't install a PPD you can just manually set the capabilities (duplex, highest PS version, resolution, tray sizes) in the native print UI, like for a mobile device
- ryanianian 6y agoI’ve had a little Brother laser printer for 10 years. Works with macOS (and every prior version of OS X), Linux, and is now operating as a remote CUPS printer connected to an RPi. I’ve only has to replace the toner once. Thing is a tank and I loathe thinking about having to replace it someday.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoEven if you do, Brother still make great printers that work with aftermarket toners. Build quality has gone down a little but so have all brands.
- lsiebert 6y agoMy brother printer is actually 20 years old and still works. Have had to replace the roller once and the ink a few times, and it's not wireless but for how rarely I print I've definitely got my money's worth.
- LeonM 6y agoI have run a paperless business (and life, mostly) for the past 10 years. For some old-fashoned customers I always carried a Brother DS-mobile 600 portable document scanner in my bag. The scanner was expensive, but really nice. And it worked perfectly with MacOS 'capture' application that existed on Snowleapard (10.6). However, Apple removed TWAIN support in MacOs Lion (10.7), and Brother refused to release updated drivers. The only way to use the scanner was using the horribly bloated third party scanning software, that was basically useless for document scanning (but it did allow you to draw a hat on the photo of your dog!). Up to this day they still market the scanner as 'MacOS compatible'. Ironically, my scanner is now an expensive paperweight. Which makes it double useless, since I have no paper.
- Nextgrid 6y agoA solution (if you still need the scanner) is to use VueScan: https://www.hamrick.com https://www.hamrick.com It's an application that has its own (reverse-engineered) drivers for many USB scanners that doesn't depend on the system having support for it. I've used it and it works perfectly, though the UI is quite complex at first glance due to the amount of various configuration options it offers.
- LeonM 6y agoI did end up using VueScan, but not being impressed with it. My use case was scanning 1 or more pages into a PDF document. This was really easy to do with Apple's 'Capture' software. None of the alternatives (like VueScan) came close to the effectiveness of Capture. I remember also being quite annoyed that I had to spend more money on a VueScan license, just because Brother refused to release a compatible driver for a scanner that was then still sold as new and 'MacOS compatible'. This was not a cheap scanner, the least they could have done was to compensate the license cost of the piece of software that made their product usable.
- mattkevan 6y agoHaven’t used VueScan for ages, but it was essential in the early days of MacOS X. Most scanner makers wouldn’t release new drivers, so VueScan was the only way to get often quite expensive hardware working again.
- nelaboras 6y agoI've gone for an OKI office machine (MC532) for around 220€. Its a color laser printer and also exists with a scanner version. I have some issues with Linux printing via USB but via network all works great. When i, a humble mortal consumer, had issues with the driver I shot them an email and within 2 days had a call with tier 2 support which tpol > 1h with me on the phone to try different scenarios. Really impressed by that service quality. My lesson: avoid consumer companies.