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Linux support for Brother printers is variable. brlaser kind of works for mine, but only with a patch, and some documents still end up producing a white page...
by bpye 4y ago
Linux support for Brother printers is variable. brlaser kind of works for mine, but only with a patch, and some documents still end up producing a white page...
- aidenn0 4y agoMost of their laser printers have binary drivers available for linux
- andix 4y agoFor laser printers there are always models that support PCL and Postscript. They work with any operating system and can be used with generic drivers. Usually they are a few bucks more expensive, but you will be able to still use them in 30 years, when nobody knows anymore what windows 11 was.
- hakfoo 4y agoThat's what I don't get: why is there still API "innovation" going on for printing? Especially for a bog-standard black-and-white laser, there's nothing that needs to be done now that couldn't be done with PostScript or PCL circa 1995. (Yeah, there's a bazillion stupid ideas for mobile-device connectivity and wireless setup, but those are tangential to "here is an IP address and port, feed it PostScript and pages come out") I could see a case for a minor "reverse channel" extension to allow for feature detection and probing consumable supplies, but that's something that should have been a documented, industry-standard API, and could be optional. I assume it represents two factors: 1. They believe there's enough "value add" in the software (enforcing accounts or consumable purchases) to carry its weight on the books. 2. The hardware is so phenomenally bad that they're relying on mountains of model-specific firmware and driver glue to make it even remotely resemble a functional printer. I suppose we missed our chance at the USB cutover-- we seemed to get a unified standard for HID and mass storage, but nobody wrangled the printer and scanner people.