Completely untrue nowadays...
They work better in Linux than Windows, not to mention backwards compatibility.
EDIT: I may be wrong about newest printer models, 2020 and above.
EDIT2: Hardware problems are an entirely different issue.
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I swear my 3d printer is more reliable than my paper printer.
At least if my 3d printer breaks I can fix it.
I am wondering why there is no open framework for laser printing.
There are a few parts that would have to be made out of sheet metal. The sides could be stamped for the same pattern. You then need a back and a cross section. One could theoretically make them from ABS, but ABS gets brittle with heat and the sides will shatter.
One side of the printer is dedicated to running an ARM SOC. I'm not sure if the Arduino is up to the task, but it will need to control 3 motors, initiate a heating sequence, start a rasterizing laser, interpret a print job, communicate over network and USB, and monitor a bunch of sensors.
The hardest parts will be obtaining print cartridges, rollers, and fusers. Designing a standard to run off a certain vendor's hardware will be a pile of issues, and nobody will just start manufacturing hardware for a handful of hobbyist printers.
Everything else is 3d printing, springs, and screws.
Well, cartridges, rollers, and fusers are the important bits that can't easily be manufactured by hand. And that's a big part of the price of the printer.
You can't really make them cheaper than mass-manufacture, and laser printers are already almost bulletproof from my experience.
You are right. I think I rubber-ducked myself to the same conclusion.
Bottles are simpler.
For laser printing?
No, not there.
Besides the reasons already mentioned most people who would be interested in bleeding edge tinkering probably have moved on from paper at this point.
Good point. Most people hate printing anyway.
2d printers need to be a lot more precise. 300dpi means each dot is placed with less than a tenth of a mm, and that's not even particularly impressive for a 2d printer. 3d printers get away with a lot more slop than that.
That's only talking about greyscale. Color requires precise alignment of the cartridges for at least 4 base colors (higher end photo printers have even more) , and the mix of those colors must be carefully controlled to get accurate output.
Yeah, that is one of the big problems I was considering. Even monochrome at 300 DPI would be a problem. The imaging array and drum would need to be manufactured separately and installed as whole unit.
At least it only needs to be precise if the register is adjustable. You would need some tiny stepper motors right? I'm not familiar with how register is adjusted on desktop printers, but I know it can be.
I too own an HP
Let's go back to stone tablets. Only instead of stone, it's plastic and resin.
"Here's my report." Slaps what appears to be 100 fast food trays down on the desk
My cheap old 3D printer requires constant fiddling before and after every print, yet still fails probably half the time. I avoid printing things sometimes just because I don't want to deal with it.
I would still agree with you 100%. I hate my HP printer so much.
Huh? Linux and printers are the best
My hp printer has worked perfectly and reliably with CUPS for years now. Just turn it on and print, works every time.
Open source print drivers, baby! I still hate CUPS though.
Why the CUPS hate?
This wasn't true *not so long ago.
*Depends on your definition of long 🤷.
Seriously, one of the best ways to fix printer issues with windows. Is to buy a cheap raspberry pi zero or similar. And stick it in between as a print server. It solves so many random issues for both bad printer, firmwears and fucky windows behaviors
CUPS is absolutely amazing compared to windows printer drivers which had whole ass critical CVEs several times already.
Even Apple uses CUPS
CUPS is horrible, and also had its share of critical vulnerabilities. It is just better than the LPD mess we had before.
It is not a Linux specific thing - it was developed when there still were a lot of UNIX variants around. Apple was a very early contributor, and had quite a bit of influence in making it successful.
It’s no surprise Apple uses CUPS. They wrote it, after all.
Edit: TIL Apple didn’t write CUPS themselves but they bought the company that did it pretty early in the game. Here’s a LWN article from the time, exposing some of the worries that came with the news of the acquisition: https://lwn.net/Articles/242020/
With cups it's pretty much painless on linux form me, though some distros have a very restrictive firewall configuration out of the box, so you have to whitelist it before using. Not too complicated, but can be very frustrating for new users who never touched a firewall before.
ufw ring a bell 😒... yeah, being uncomplicated doesn't mean it's not working.
Printers fucking suck.
Back in the day you'd just
cat file.txt > /dev/lp0and it would work. Mostly.My printer used to integrate perfectly with windows 11. I was using some Ancient driver I found on some internet archive. windows updater found a new drive, now it's a mess of different UIs to print or scan shit
There is a way to disable driver updates via Windows update.
Do a rollback on the driver, should bring back the old driver.
A Linux meme that's somewhat critical of Linux?
I wonder what the comments will be like....
It's not really critical of Linux, it's criticising those stupid fucking printers in general
Linux has printer problems? Printing works fine for me...
Brother printer initialised in a couple of clicks in Arch, took 10 minutes to do it in Windows.
I have been installing Arch for the last 2 years, so windows 10 min duration is significantly faster
Then youre just bad try archinstall
Printers are pretty plug'n'play these days, at least until something technical goes wrong. Getting exactly what you want on paper can be pretty tough, though. I wrote an entire printing stack from scratch for an embedded system, but that was for a very specific set of models from a single manufacturer. It actually worked every time, especially when there were errors and warnings, but it took actual effort.
Brothers linux script still working great for me and my aging printers
+1 to brother printers
Brother printers were the last straw in throwing away they last inkjet I ever hope to own.
Want to scan something into your computer, you say? Sorry, can't do that because you're low on magenta!
No idea if their laser printers try the same crap, because I avoided that brand when it came to picking one out, but holy crap what an off-putting experience.
Here's a better meme.
HP printers:
Like... why would it be 🤨... that's insane, how dare you ask a printer to print!
The printers are probably running Linux too.
Nope, *BSD... most of them.
My printer has to go through like 5 power cycles for it to even detect its ink cartridges. I guess thats what i get for taking the ewaste printer from the office
Atleast it was free? I did the same thing, took office salvage. I’ll be replacing it soon with a laser printer.
a free printer is always awesome, but youll mostly spend money on ink anyway
A free printer might be awesome if it's laser...a free ink jet printer is like saying you got stabbed 'for free'. I mean, yeah, it was free.
I would only think them to work better on Linux because the software you're using isn't made by the printer company. Their software sucks. The hardware sucks, too. They're made to be shit because a perfect printer isn't profitable.
Since I've moved in South East Asia, I have discovered that:
The only reason we in developped country get scammed like we are, is because of IP laws and governments that allow manufacturers to abuse them with no consequences at the expense of the customers (and the planet).
I would like to hear more about those conversion kits and what are they reused for.
Look up your printer model number on Alibaba. Or better yet, on Taobao (but if you don't speak Chinese it's a bit complicated). Your options depending on the printer you have are going to be :
CounterfeitedCompatible ink cartridges that cost a fraction of the official ones while having 10 times more ink in them.Now depending on where you live and the local laws it may or may not be legal to import those. In the country I live in there is no law against it. In most South East Asia the law doesn't care about that and if it does, law enforcement doesn't. :)
On linux i was able to setup my hp laserjet no problem, cups recognised it just fine; the problem is with the integrated scanner, SANE sees that there is some sort of scanner but fails to talk to it, i have windows 10 installed on a usb key essentially only to use the scanner
I do freelance sysadmin work and Macs are actually the hardest to mass deploy printer configurations to.
Macs are usually the hardest to do of any sort of enterprise management. But printers? Holy fuck, its a nightmare lmao
At my workplace we have sketchy-looking unsigned Applescripts to install printers on Macs. You have to find the right file for the printer you want to install, and run it, or ask IT to do it for you.
It's not ideal, but everyone that tries to improve the printing experience ends up ragequitting. Last I heard, someone in IT was looking into some sort of "print anywhere" solution where you just install one virtual printer driver and print to it, then scan your badge at any printer to see all your print jobs and print them. Not sure what the status is with that though - haven't heard about it for a while.
I thought I saw that Mac has the same CUPS print service/printer manager that Linux uses? In fact it seems like apple developed it. I think that helps enormously with standardizing printer configs. https://www.cups.org/doc/admin.html
Enterprise grade MFD printers often have a lot of features that don't get detected/mapped automatically, such as finishing options like staples and folding, as well as color management. I'm not a printer expert, I try to avoid them when possible, but I know that mass deploying those specific configurations in a safe and sane way seems basically impossible.
On the Fedora-based Linux machines, however, all of that seems to just pop in automatically, so I don't think it's a CUPS problem.
If you need one, staple by hand. If you need 30, make 29 copies with staple, and while they're printing, staple the one by hand.
Or at least that's what I would have said in my IT days lol.
I think it does; it's just automated installation of new printers that's an issue as far as I know. Not 100% sure since I'm a software developer rather than an IT support person, so I never deal with stuff like that. (I also haven't used a Mac in 7 years)
It's my understanding that CUPS was developed at Apple.
Apple bought CUPS then did little with it, causing the main dev to leave and fork the project.
🤷 😂
Has anyone had luck or experience with using IPP for printing from Linux? A standard networking protocol for printing sounds like it should make a lot of these problems mute.
Works as intended usually.
Yep, works OK on one of my setups at work.
lp0 is still on fire tho...
Say what now?
you sir, are fire
I had to start the scanner tool from the command line, I felt like a hacker but it did usually work on Linux.
I stopped using paper and suddenly my printer problems went away
Stop printing.
Honestly who NEEDS a printer anymore? We've moved on from printing out driving directions from MapQuest and burning our own DVD collections. We should ditch home printers and only use online printing services whenever you want something physical so it's made nicely by someone who knows what they're doing.
Many people still use printers.
Yeah, he was basically telling them to stop, or maybe more generally he was telling them to take a look at whether they really need to print things.
It can still be nice to have one so you can print out more pages in parallel than you have space on your screen and using a pen to annotate a document.
Basically, I don't see any other reason, except for annotation.
A tablet with a stylus: im about to ruin this lemmitor’s whole career!
First time I've seen lemmitor.... Not sure if it's better or worse than lemming.....
You must be an executive with impeccable logic such as that.
Yeah I switched to LMDE a couple months ago and I plugged in my printer for the first time but long ago. I was worried it wouldn't work at first but it started printing right away!
I had the opposite experience, it even works with my Steam Deck.
Printers are weird..
No joke, printing is like the #1 thing I like most about switching from Windows to Linux. I still get errors about the bypass tray every time I try to print from Windows. I'M NOT USING THE BYPASS TRAY!
Ah, the famous bypass tray... I still have no idea why they made those...
I've found Mac OS is by far the best OS for getting printers to work tbh
OSX and Linux both use the Common Unix Printing System. It works more or less the same on both systems.
shhhhhh.... they need to justify the price tag...
I don't own a Mac outside of my work laptop. Like OP said in another reply, it's likely because vendors pre-configure the system to work out of the box on Mac OS.
It's just my anecdotal experience but writing off my comment as me justifying a purchase (that I haven't made) is just silly and lazy discussion
FWIW, I use Linux on all my personal machines
Somebody made that purchase, though. dismissing the cost point for apple products because you didn't personally fork over is... amusing. Also, most vendors configure for windows, aka the OS with the largest market share of desktop computing devices. Some vendors (like epson), who cater to photography or graphic design will also ensure it works in Mac, but as noted elsewhere, the drivers for the printers in MacOS and linux are the same- CUPS. if printer compatibility is what you were looking for, you got taken for a ride. (this is not to say there aren't valid reasons for living in Apple's walled garden...there are... it's just printer hardware isn't one of them)
I learned that the CUPS config on Mac, at least as of about a year ago, was set to save a copy of everything ever printed to an obscure directory on the machine. Was discussed in relation to setting up a secure encryption scheme where you print out your keys, wouldn’t want something like that just hanging out for any malware to come gobble up.
It used zeroconf/bonjur out of the box when no one else used it (or had to do some serious configs in order to get it working), that's why. And, of course, since it's the second most used OS other than Windows, printer manufacturers configured avahi/zeroconf/bonjur out of the box on their printers.
Literally the biggest issue
called "quirks".
To be honest, yes 🤷.
I never had any problems printing or scanning on Linux. Meanwhile my dad's PC bluescreens from opening the driver UI.
Printers suck so bad that are responsible of starting free software (well part of it). Thanks printers for sucking bad.
Context:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.en.html
WTF? Is this about using inkjets on WiFi?
That was the last thing that kept me dual booting. Eventually, I realized that my printer wasn't worth using on any OS so I wasn't losing anything by going all-in.
Same I've had great luck with pop, it found my brother color laser and even installed my hp latex 260. I'd never print to that directly though.
I got an amazing old HP office laser jet, a 1320n. Would Linux be able to print from it relatively easily? I had to work pretty hard to get it on W10.
I have a pair of LaserJet 2200dn printers, they work absolutely fine in any Linux distro but I just have to make sure to use the below driver in my case:
HP LaserJet 2200 Foomatic/lj4dith (grayscale, 2-sided printing)
If I use the default or hpcups drivers it takes fucking forever (over an hour!) to process the pages. Essentially if given the option go for the lj4dith driver for your LaserJet
You can always try a Mint LiveUSB
Set up a CUPS server and it'll work fine with Windows too.
Printers are a massive headache on both. But at least with CUPS it's only a massive headache once.
It always comes down to the vendor and driver.
On Linux, I had to go through a dozen different drivers and just as many driver versions before I found the one that worked with my printer. For Windows, it worked immediately.
With my old printer, though, it was the opposite experience. Took forever to get it working on Windows but Linux got it immediately.
You'd think by now, with the dozen different printing standards that exist, we'd have some sort of plug and play driver that could work with every printer.
Maybe it's IPP only, have you tried that?
Just don't buy HP/Epson/Canon.
Buy a Brother Laserprinter, and never worry again for the rest of your life.
Trouble is, no parts for Brother over here 😔. HP has the market here and parts for them are dirt cheap.
Sure, I can order from AliExpress, but it'll take months to arrive.