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Comment by Quekid5 | Hacker News Reader

Laser all the way, baby!

... although I was disappointed recently by my usual go-to of the Brother brand. Their Linux/CUPS drivers are some sort of bizarre concoction of Perl scripts and x32 binaries... and still cannot print in duplex :/.

(I believe the duplex problem is probably a typo somewhere in the PPD or Perl script, but I don't know enough about PPDs and/or Perl scripts to be sure. I do know programming, hence my suspicion.)

Lesson is: Research if the EXACT printer you're purchasing is supported by the usual Gutenprint or whatever.

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I had that problem. Then I realized that it is just a generic pcl printer and any driver will work. I do have to manually change the queue from binary_p1 to pcl_p1, but other than that it just works. (there are other queues in the printer for postscript and the like, the printer info page lists them all.

Brother's Linux support is notoriously awful. HP are the only manufacturer who treats Linux as first-class; Epson comes close.

Warning: HP has bought Samsung printer division few years ago. As a result, there are HP-branded printers that are really Samsung inside, and they need the uld driver, which is binary-only abandonware. So caveat emptor.

I wonder if that's why our Samsung color laser failed? Never used anything but genuine Samsung cartridges, but the blue cartridge developed a leak that we just couldn't get rid of. Replaced with a Canon B/W that has been rock solid.

Is there an easy way to identify these cloaked Samsung printers? Like a different model number or something?

Not sure whether there is any systematic way to identify them.

I've been looking for a cheap b/w laser for my parents and have found HP LaserJet 135/135w. It looked very familiar, and behold, it is a rebranded Samsung SL-M2070w that I have in the office.

Hardware-wise, it is actually a nice printer. Software-wise... It works in Linux, but you have to install the binary-only uld driver. For MacOS it is more interesting: printing is not a problem, scanning in B/w is also OK, but scanning in Image Capture/Preview in color into PDF produces garbage output. What works is scanning in color into TIFF, then stitching and reexporting into PDF manually. The alternative, the EasyScan Samsung software no longer works in Catalina, it has 32-bit components.

Edit: from the ppds in the driver package, they are:

* HP Laser 10x Series

* HP Laser MFP 13x Series

* HP Color Laser 15x Series

* HP Color MFP 17x Series

Thanks! That's actually really smart: look at the drivers!

So weird that HP would buy Samsung's printer division but not kill it off.

The Brother printers I've used all support IPP, which works great from Linux or any other operating system. I would discourage buying a non-IPP printer in any case.

That's a shame. Good to know, thanks.

My recently bought inexpensive Brother printer worked with CUPS without any special drivers, thanks to the IPP support. I just connected it to the network and it's automatically discovered and supported.

I'm happy for you.

... and I believe it. Unless you researched it heavily that was just good luck, honestly. Your printer has a good OSS driver, and it worked. Mine did not, even though I thought Brother was generally OSS-friendly. :(

Well, at least the binary (x32!, if you can believe that) driver basically works, but no duplex... which is sad because I bought said printer because it had the duplex capability :/

On MacOS, our wireless Brother won't wake up without the official drivers installed in the Mac. Dunno what magic packet it's sending, but I couldn't get it working with generic drivers. Ymmv, obviously.

If you can manage it, having it wired via ethernet to an access point is way faster and more reliable. :)

You're preaching to the choir, but it was my partner's employer buying and we were at the mercy of what they had in stock :-)

This one doesn't appear to have Ethernet.

Try the brlaser driver rather than Brother's official monstrosity

I was able to get duplex working with brlaser. Definitely recommend it!!

Good information! I may try this tonight. I like everything about my Brother laser printer except that I have to have an old computer sitting next to it that does almost nothing but print stuff.

I've got mine networked with an old Orange Pi using some old cell phone charger plug running the brlaser driver and it works great. Before that, I'd always have issues between Mac/Windows/Linux for seemingly no good reason. I'm glad brlaser came around.

I will try that.

Brother drivers are every bit as crap as every other brand.

I have one of their all-in-one office machines. It prints pretty well. The wireless scan is complete garbage. A known issue with their drivers, apparently.

I've always just used IPP with Brother printers and it works great. Is that not an option with this model?

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