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.
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.
I am wondering why there is no open framework for laser printing.
Besides the reasons already mentioned most people who would be interested in bleeding edge tinkering probably have moved on from paper at this point.
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.
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.
This wasn't true *not so long ago.
*Depends on your definition of long 🤷.
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/
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
Printers fucking suck.
Back in the day you'd just cat file.txt > /dev/lp0 and 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.
Brother printer initialised in a couple of clicks in Arch, took 10 minutes to do it in Windows.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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).
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
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
I never had any problems printing or scanning on Linux. Meanwhile my dad's PC bluescreens from opening the driver UI.
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.
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 used to have a MacBook Pro and the printer worked perfectly when I printed from it, whereas my windows PC always had issues.
I had the opposite experience, it even works with my Steam Deck.
Printers are weird..
Hint: :q!
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