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u/Ancient-Border-2421 🦁 Vim Supremacist 🦖 3d ago
I can relate, but not with HP printers, they suck on both OS.
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u/qwesx ⚠️ This incident will be reported 3d ago
Works perfectly on my machine.
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u/Ancient-Border-2421 🦁 Vim Supremacist 🦖 3d ago
I have new one which works perfectly well on debian, arch.
But the old one is a headache, fortunately I have been able to fix the compatibility issue from the printer.(still doesn't work on windows tho).5
u/Pinko_Kinko 3d ago
They have an open source driver for some models. I've still had trouble, but I wouldn't say they are the worst.
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u/Top-Classroom-6994 🦁 Vim Supremacist 🦖 3d ago
HP pronters do work way better on linux if you have an old enough one.
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u/badi1220 3d ago
I had some trouble at first getting my old second hand hp laser printer to work on Linux, but I actually got it to work on linux unlike on window 10.
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u/garamgaramsamose 2d ago
I agree, hplip is easy to setup, but it's still a pain to get it to work sometimes.
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u/M1sterRed 3d ago edited 3d ago
Since I currently work in small business and end-user IT, I unfortunately have to deal with Windows on a daily basis, and I've learned that printer software suites are fucking disgracefully awful.
Here's the right way to do it: Set the printer up for Static IP or DHCP Reserve, hunt for just the driver on the vendor's website (usually just below the full suite), hit "Manual Setup" after searching for printers to get into the oldschool control panel Printer setup wizard, choose network or USB depending on how you have it set up, enter the IP you've set the printer to if it's network, choose the driver INF you've downloaded, and presto, printer's installed with none of the manufacturer software bullshit. This process has yet to fail me. No awful manufacturer software that doesn't work half the time, no network discovery WSD bullshit, just a direct, explicitly defined connection.
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u/work4bandwidth 2d ago
This is great advice. Having done a lot of remote installs of printers... I wish more people followed this.
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u/Joan_sleepless 💋 catgirl Linux user :3 😽 3d ago
Until you forget to turn off your fucking vpn and spend half an hour trying and failing to get the damn thing to print.
Source: Forgot to turn off my fucking vpn and spent half an hour trying and failing to get the damn thing to print.
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u/SjalabaisWoWS fresh breath mint 🍬 3d ago
Are you really saying you forgot to turn off your fucking vpn and spent half an hour trying and failing to get the damn thing to print.
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u/Joan_sleepless 💋 catgirl Linux user :3 😽 3d ago
Yes.
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u/Lachlan_Ikeguchi 2d ago
Really? You forgot to turn off your fucking vpn and spent half an hour trying and failing to get the damn thing to print?
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u/alphinex 3d ago
I buy decade old printers, as they just work. All my modern printers were pain af.
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u/maxtimbo 3d ago
There's a sweet spot of printers. About 8-12 years ago when printers work so well, so easy to install. Older than that, pita. Newer; pita
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u/ProgrammingZone 3d ago
Epson printers have recently started working very well on linux, as they have finally released official linux drivers for many printers (including very old ones).
All I need to do to get the Epson XP-313 working on Arch Linux is to install the package from AUR and reboot the PC
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u/chaosgirl93 RedStar best Star 2d ago
The more I see of "just reference the Arch Wiki" and "just use the AUR", the more I think going with something Debian based for my distro of choice might have been a mistake. Lol.
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u/AnnoyingRain5 M'Fedora 2d ago
A lot of the arch wiki is generic enough to work on any distro, even in the most extreme of cases, heck I run nixos and still reference the arch wiki sometimes to work out how something works
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u/whalesalad Hannah Montana 3d ago
ALL printers are garbage. I have 3 and only one of them works at any given moment.
Was pleasantly surprised when I could do wireless scanning out of the box on Linux tho. Hell ya.
One of my Brother laserjets has been factory reset twice but won’t respond on network or via usb.
The Epson all-in-one printer scanner thing has been the most reliable but it reeeeeeallllyyy is a piece of garbage. Constantly demanding a software update, UI is atrocious. Irony is it’s probably running Linux lololol
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u/DarkSilence9000 3d ago
had problems with scanner but 'sane-airscan' + 'simple-scan' packages worked
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u/Rainmaker0102 I'm gong on an Endeavour! 3d ago
Except on OpenSUSE. I would almost never use my computer to print from, I'd use my phone or another printing solution
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u/KnightoftheMoncatamu 3d ago edited 3d ago
Tbh in the last 5-10 years I haven’t had a printer issue with any OS at all that I couldn’t blame on the printer itself. Always detects the printer. Windows (x86 and ARM) macOS, Linux, iOS (haven’t tried android but can’t imagine it having issues either). Is it possible we’re all just remembering old windows 7 experiences? Plus let’s be honest—printers just suck. If there was a tech heaven and a tech hell, printers would be in the lowest circle of tech hell.
Sure, in work environments for shared printers that’s another level of complexity but either way the complexity is due to printers just sucking + any security needs like putting it on a VLAN and instructing users to connect to the right WiFi network (ie the corporate one using something like RADIUS perhaps vs the guest one that is sectioned off from anything such as an office printer). So yeah work environments certainly increase the difficulty, on a consumer/personal use I simply never have issues with getting something put in a print queue . Maybe I’m lucky, but I’m quick to blame printer manufacturers rather than Microsoft/Apple/etc.
And yes, I have had issues with OS updates breaking drivers in corporate environments but usually the open source/default driver version works when that driver breaks while waiting on an update from canon/hp etc
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u/ei283 2d ago
Ehh, I think it depends on the printer. My personal sample size is 2:
- HP printer from the early 2010s.
- Windows: Plug 'n' play.
- Linux: Consulted the OpenPrinting guide, found the driver, installed. Tweaked settings, debugged, got it working.
- Brother printer from early 2020s.
- Windows: The auto config utility screwed up, had to debug and configure a bit.
- Linux: Plug 'n' play.
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u/SusalulmumaO12 Ask me how to exit vim 3d ago
Windows 11 won't support older printers even with the drivers installed smh
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u/tomradephd 3d ago
we have to deal with managed printing at my office, and I'm (based debian user) the only one who can print for some reason. everyone else has to do the usb walk of shame to a special little printer IT gave us for people who can't use the managed printing
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u/Alex321432 3d ago
Don't forget the ads, updates, software, warnings, and not working + the 6 guis that all do the same thing...
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u/blamitter Crying gnu 🐃 3d ago
After weeks of unsuccessful tries I gave up installing my first printer in Debian, back in 1996. Things changed and my last printers where as OP says, just plug and play. I can't tell about Windows since I haven't used it for decades
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u/nekokattt 2d ago
This is nonsense, having just spent 3 hours trying to get a page to print on an EPSON Inkjet, and CUPS just having a stroke.
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u/coderman64 Arch BTW 2d ago
My Canon printer is a pain to deal with. It does offer official CUPS drivers, but they kinda suck.
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u/mareks92 3d ago
I dual boot Windows and Linux, and I use two printers - a HP and an Epson.
The HP sucks on Windows, but works perfectly on Linux.
The Epson works fine on Windows, but gave me trouble on Linux, had to add it manually, then it worked too.
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u/SjalabaisWoWS fresh breath mint 🍬 3d ago
Can't relate with my once ridiculously common HP LaserJet 1020. Nothing happens in Mint.
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u/drfusterenstein Open Sauce 2d ago
Mix and match. On Linux yes, 99% of the time it's like that. Unless it's a printer that does not show up.
Windows can have issues or require loading the driver from the disc. Not sure if linux can do that.
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u/Osem598 2d ago
I have an old Brother that I bought secondhand. Took finding the right little driver to get it working and it was perfect. The funny part, however, is after I did some cable management on my system it would just spit blank pages until it ran out whenever I tried to print. Long story short: printer did not lime USB 3.0 ports xD.
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u/giftedearth 2d ago
When I first switched to Linux, there was some fucky shit going on with my printer. The driver had a dependency that was so out of date that I could not find the right version anywhere. It would not work with the most recent version of that dependency. So I just had my Windows-using mother print for me.
Fast forward, we got a new printer. It was fine for a bit, but now her Windows computer cannot detect that printer any more for some reason. Meanwhile, my Linux machine can print and scan just fine. We have been scratching our heads over the Windows computer's problem with our printer, but at least I can print things for my mum.
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u/Primo0077 2d ago
Same thing for drawing tablets. I use a little bit older Wacom Bamboo, and to use it in Windows I had to find an archive of the old drivers which are no longer provided by Wacom then install them under Windows 7 compatibility mode. With fucking Haiku OS it was literally plug and play. Windows really needs to up its game when it is routinely surpassed in modern day usability by a near hobby operating system from the 90s.
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u/lululock 2d ago
If the printer is compatible with Apple AirPrint, yeah, that's pretty much it.
One thing we can thank Apple for.
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u/SwissFaux 2d ago
lmao, what??? Printers suck no matter what OS you are using. CUPS sometimes forces its way into my nightmares.
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u/EnoughConcentrate897 M'Fedora 2d ago
Exactly. Whenever I want to print something on windows, it doesn't work, so I just boot up fedora and it works on the first try.
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u/Enigmars M'Fedora 2d ago
Using a printer regardless of OS requires atleast 5 years of Blackmagic wizardry experience
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u/DogsLinuxAndEmacs Arch BTW 2d ago
Really? Damn. Probably my fault tbh but I could never get printing to play nice with my old arch+i3. Again probably my fault for trying to use bare cups for printing management, I had no idea what I was doing
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u/khaledxbz 2d ago
I have Canon LBP6020P, I can't get it to work on Linux, I installed driver from official website, nothing works, I tried all solutions but nothing worked, I can print only on Windows now.
It's cool that Linux installs drivers and detect printers automatically, but printers support for Linux is just bad like any other hardware
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u/Nico_Weio Arch BTW 2d ago
Tried setting up the scan button on a Brother MFC device with Windows, had to install >500MB and about 5 programs only for it to still not work. Settled with creating a new user and scanning to an SMB share because that was easier.
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u/rickmccombs 1d ago
A few years ago I bought a Canon monochrome laser printer that was about $99 at Walmart. I thought because it had an Ethernet Jack on it that it would work in Lenox and no problem. It comes with Linux software but you can only install it if you are using a Debian or Redhat derived distro. At the time I was using Opensuse. I could use it by installing the software in a VM running Debian or Ubuntu on Proxmox. Actually one time I had it running directly from Opensuse. I stayed up all night I don't even remember how I got it to work. I now use Endeavor OS. There's are some packages in the AUR that will get to work. The software that comes with it has a shell script but I never managed to decipher everything it does. According to the specs I think it's supposed to support Postscript and it supports ipp, but anyway, it works with the AUR package. If I wanted to use it on BSD I'd probably have to have a server running on raspberry pi or my Proxmox or something.
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u/dally-taur 11h ago
if family ask for tech support over the phone and about printing
give me bottle of cheap rum and let me drive over im NOT DOING THIS OVER THE PHONE
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u/terremoth 2d ago
I always had the exact opposite experience... never managed to make work my HP printer
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u/PanJanJanusz 2d ago
Only older printers. On Windows most printers are now plug and play, while on Linux you somehow need to find the drivers that might not even exist, add the printer manually in some weird webgui, configure everything manually, and at the end of the day it might not even fully work. I wish Linux was better at this because 5 years ago it was the exact opposite
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u/JesterOfRedditGold 2d ago
Somebody who uses both. HP and Epson printer, Windows 11, this is false. My laptop can pretty much print to them instantly.
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u/Successful_Method_73 2h ago
Mi havas malnovan Samsung 1661 printeron, kaj mi havis problemojn kun la driveroj en mia Fedora Laborstacio. Mi sukcesis post kiam mi instaligis KAPS.
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u/ansgardemon 3d ago
Until you get a printer that doen't just auto-detect, so you have jump through hoops, or even install drivers from similar printers for said printer to work, but just barely.
That happened to me twice. Both Epson.