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.
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.
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.
Good point. Most people hate printing anyway.
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
I too own an HP
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 🤷.
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.
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.
The printers are probably running Linux too.
Nope, *BSD… most of them.
A Linux meme that’s somewhat critical of Linux?
I wonder what the comments will be like…
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:
- Almost every single printer that exists has a conversion kit available on Taobao to use big ink bottles
- There’s not a single firmware that hasn’t been hacked, nor a single part that hasn’t been cloned
- Therefore, most printer manufacturers have a specific line of durable products that allows the use of third party ink because if they don’t, other people will bank of their product maintenance and they won’t sell much.
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 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
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.
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.
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
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.
I had to start the scanner tool from the command line, I felt like a hacker but it did usually work on Linux.
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’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
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
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.
