Finding Linux Compatible Printers | Hacker News Reader

Finding Linux Compatible Printers

haydenjames.io

43 pointsashitlerferad47 comments

Just buy Brother. Their driver support is also great for Windows and Mac. More importantly, they last many years. I'm still using the same laser printer from 2007.

While my print volume is low, I find HP and most other printers start to have paper feed issues within a few year years as the rubber components quickly degrade. The parts are usually expensive and complicated to replace.

I've found the same problem with Canon printers in the early 2000's. The paper would no longer feed properly, or not feed at all. At some point small parts started coming loose like some of the smaller idling rollers that apparently are made of some low grade plastic and simply get brittle and break.

Slight correction: buy Brother printers with BRScript, their PostScript clone. Faster and less error-prone than weird GDI printers.

We replace(d) heavily used lasers in the office with Brothers about once every four years. At home, one has been chugging along for about 12 years now.

Just buy HP (Hewlett-Packard). The HP Linux Printing and Imaging System (HPLIP)[0,1] provides full support for printing on most HP SFP (single function peripheral) inkjets and many LaserJets, and for scanning, sending faxes and for photo-card access on most HP MFP (multi-function peripheral) printers.

[0] https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing

[1] https://repology.org/project/hplip

YMMV with this, ensure the model is supported. (been burnt a couple of times)

I've had no issues with Brother though.

I use a HP printer with Linux and it works out of the box. Never had any problem with it (printing, scanning, etc).

Very much this. Earlier this year I bought an HP Colour LaserJet Pro MFP M281fdw which has a scanner built in.

Although HPLIP didn't support the scanner initially, it now does, and I'm quite delighted with the whole setup.

HP used to be the best but I'm not sure anymore. The last couple of devices I had from them were dire whereas the Brother we have at home has been going strong for a long time.

HP hasn't been the best for 20 years. I second (or third or fourth) the recommendation for Brother.

HP is also among the leaders of ink DRM and tracking technology for their Instant Ink subscription.

I have HP LaserJet 1020 and I hate it, because it needs firmware to be uploaded after start, which is hard to setup properly.

Or Xerox for that matter. At the price of laser printers, they’re actually affordable.

Modern Linux printing isn't anywhere near as difficult as it used to be.

Virtually all modern network-capable printers support "driverless" (read: standardized page data format) printing. CUPS has embedded drivers for "driverless" printers and will print to them with little to no configuration.

In addition, printers that support PostScript have always worked with Linux. This covers most workgroup-level laser printers.

The only potential pitfall is that some wifi printers need to be configured over USB to set the SSID and WPA password, but this can be done from a Windows VM or, at least in the case of HP, through the HP Linux drivers.

Never buy a consumer inkjet printer. This isn't a Linux thing but rather a value-for-money thing. Buy a B&W laser and, if you need to print photographs, get them done by a photo lab or print shop.

The other side of the problem, that people may find interesting, is finding linux compatible scanners. For this, the sane project has a list of compatible scanners [1].

I was trying to buy a portable printer, because the one I had could not be used by linux, and the only portable (A4) device they list as supported is the Q-Scan USB001 (A4 portable scanner) made by Portable Peripheral, but I could not find it anywhere in online stores.

I think the act of scanning -- receipts, taxes, contracts, IDs or general reference documents -- will fade away later than the act of printing.

[1] http://www.sane-project.org/sane-supported-devices.html

I usually “scan” with my phone using office lens, even though I have an actual scanner. I think as phones improve the added value of a flatbed scanner becomes smaller and smaller.

Maybe it is my preconception, but I always saw these apps as a hack, and thought the scanner produces more high-resolution documents.

Scanning receipts and other "volume" documents may mean I have to scale them down to save space in the future, though.

Small flatbed (flatbad?) scanners like Canon's Lide series are very cheap and light. Not quite as small as a pull-through scanner...

I have a ScanSnap S1300i which I use with Linux. It is portable and eats A4 pages, receipts or whatever very easily.

Here is the guide i followed when installing: https://www.josharcher.uk/code/install-scansnap-s1300-driver...

Same. It's a brilliant little scanner.

It seems portable enough, I will try to find one. Thanks!

I suspect that any printer with airprint and Ethernet will just work at this point. I've yet to see an Ethernet printer that required a special app to set it up. A lot of multifunction machines will even support scanning to a network share. I would only work about compatibility for printers that need a USB connection, or large format printers that need special RIP software.

Network printers are less problematic on Windows, too.

I thought that the USB spec already has a specific device class for printers? As long as the Linux kernel's USB subsystem has a driver that handles printer classes (which I'm pretty sure it would), then why should there be any compatibility issues with USB based printers?

You still need driver to convert document data to something that printer happens to understand.

Just find an IPP Everywhere compatible printer https://www.pwg.org/printers/ (actually nearly everything support IPP now, it's PWG that's still relatively new, but IPP+PDF is totally fine)

The new MOPRIA standard for printers is interesting. Allows for easy printing and sometimes scanning from your mobile phone. Brother has many certified models.

We ran some Ricoh printers with PostScript 3, and they did really well printing from our various Unix boxes. They also were fine with Android and iOS.

If anyone is still reading the comments here... I'm currently in the market for a new color laser network MFP for use with Linux, preferably with duplex printing and duplex scan/copy. Any suggestions/recommendations? Brother fans: Does Brother offer functionality such as network scanning?

This makes me more curious about the act of printing in general. When was the last time you actually had to print anything?

I still have a color laser printer but the last time I used it was over a year ago when I moved it to a different printserver (it's a non-networked model) in my house and I wanted to test it.

School-aged kids always have something to print... this may change this school year.

Tax forms that the tax software doesn't handle. A fair amount of banking business that needs signatures.

I don't think I've had a single of paper to print for any of the banks I deal with over the last 10 years, even while I was buying houses or getting a mortgage or anything. Same with tax or anything for my business.

I do think some kids in my family still have to print something every now and then but usually the school supplies anything related to printing/scanning/duplication. But anything beyond the first 10 years is practically either in-person or purely digital.

Maybe it's a difference in country/culture/government/time.

My wife is treasurer of a non-profit and has to deal with annoying physical paper once a month or so.

Even aside from school, we constantly print coloring pages or other crafts related things for the kids. We can usually find the exact obscure Pokemon or whatever they want to color online.

> this may change this school year.

I think it will increase. A lot of teachers are posting pdf worksheets for kids to print and complete at home.

> this may change this school year. IN the last 5 months I had to print more stuff for my kids than I've done in total over the last 5 years. Lockdown actually pushed me to replace a crap inkjet I've had for a decade, with a brand new Brother laser that is simply a dream (with macOS at least - had issues with Linux that I've just not had the inclination to solve, it's easier to just copy files over...).

I print maps and other resources for D&D. Occasionally I'll also print a picture I take or something I draw.

That's about it for me.

I don't own a printer but if I did I would print out academic papers because I find it easier to focus on them when they are printed out

I print almost nothing despite having spent my whole career working on printing technology of one form or another.

I hardly use mine, but still feel like I have to keep it around for things that only take forms and documents in physical form. I end up using mine like once a year, but when I do use it it's usually something that has to be printed.

I ended up buying a Brother combination laser printer and scanner. Laser printers deal better with infrequent use, and I find the scanner (which is much more useful, IMO) helps justify the space the machine takes up.

In my house we print receipts for tax deductions, tax documents, agreements that need signed then scanned, todo lists for kids, the occasional academic paper, Christmas cards, occasional party invitations. A few of those are outsourced to OfficeMax or Costco, but I'd like to upgrade my printer to stop doing that soon.

Sometimes I have to print invoices, when I travel I make sure to print out the ticket/boarding pass just in case. We still send Christmas cards. I've designed and printed out a few A3 posters for a friend's bar.

We still don't own a printer, it takes up too much space, I just go to the convenience store and pay 10+ cents per page

Back in the day I had an IBM ProPrinter-compatible dot matrix printer (from EPSON). It made a loud sound when printing. It used a parallel port cable. It used some old-school paper that was continuous and had holes on the side.

We have come a long way since then.

If your printer is not on the list then perhaps a Windows virtual machine will be able to handle it.

This is how I managed to make my father's old printer work on Windows 7 - I had an Win XP virtual machine do the printing.

My Canon PIXMA TS6050 "just works" with Linux.

In fact it works far more seamlessly than on Windows...

Macos uses cups for printing. So anything supported on macOS should work on Linux.

Nice job Op. Thank you.

No love for Kyocera?

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