I’ve noticed a general sentiment that printing on Linux is (or at least was) extremely cumbersome and difficult. Why is that?
Is printing cumbersome and difficult on Linux? Yes, it can be. Is it better than Windows? Also yes.
Any problem I’ve ever had printing is almost exclusively a problem with the printer, it’s usually yellow or cyan. Doesn’t matter the document is black&white.
I’m not sure on this one, but it may depend on the printer. Printing on Linux for me has been the easiest process ever. Windows fights me at every corner, but Linux sees me network printers and they just work out of the box. (I’ve only used Brother printers for the last 20 years)
It used to back in the day, especially if you tried using shitty windows usb inkjets.
Nowadays basically all printers are network printers (they are, aren’t they?) plus we have cups which is the same thing macos uses (so manufacturers actually care).
Printing has basically everywhere been annoying. You need(-ed) specific drivers or even apps to make it work and if you have that set up it still can be annoying. And because most of these drivers/apps don’t support Linux printing relied on reverse engineered drivers. Then CUPS came around which made things better. And when apple adopted CUPS for Mac suddenly everyone wanted to support.
If you are really interested check out this episode of destination Linux where it’s discussed in detail.
HP Laser 107w, driverless, over LAN.
I just Ctrl+P from any software and it prints.
It also prints programmatically (for e.g. folk.computer ) thanks to IPP.
I didn’t have to “think about printing” since I have that setup so I don’t know where you get that sentiment.
I think that used to be the case more than it is now. Linux now uses the same printing system (CUPS) as macOS, and macOS printing has to work or Apple’s customers would be unsatisfied.
Printing is a bitch no matter the platform and its usually the producers of the printers that fail. Everyone wants to make their own standard or interpret any standard in their own way. Duplex settings? Sometimes easy to find, and sometimes called something else and put in a weird spot of the interface.
Basic printing to usb is fine on Linux. My pi zero hooked to a brother laser has been providing wifi printing for me for the last 5 years. Installed cups and connected the usb and it was rocking
Yeah printing is very hit or miss regardless of platform.
I have a HP printer and printing is never a smooth process. No idea why, but it takes me 5/10 minutes each time
From my experience I’ve had to deal with their
softwareadware for which I’ve had to close pop ups and upsell ads before I could do anything with their printers, so that might be why it takes long to print a simple pageWhat if they printed 1 ad for 1 page…
^Shutup me stop giving them ideas^
My issue lies elsewhere, it takes me that long to have the printer recognized by the OS, then by CUPS browser, then I send the printing job and… it just stalls, never prints. I then cycle the USB ports and start all over again until it miraculously prints
I have the exact opposite experience. It always prints and although it only prints about 6 pages per minute, it starts immediately. However, I have an old-ish HP laser printer without the crappy adware.
My next printer will not be a HP for that reason.
Teach me your ways. I don’t have a very new model, I think it’s a 4130e or something. Do you use CUPS?
cups + hplip . The hplip package is probably key.
It was terrible in the 90’s. Since CUPS became standard around 2000 it’s significantly easier.
I only print docs and pictures. But in my opinion printing on Linux is largely better than Windows. It just works most of the time. And if there is an issue the solution is generally restarting the job.
It used to be much, much more difficult than it is today, but your experiences will still vary according to what type of printer you have. The problem is drivers. There are still printers out there that have no working Linux driver (mostly old, non-Postscript-supporting, with no Mac drivers either). Some will work with a generic driver, but some features aren’t available. The more annoying case is the one where the manufacturer put out a driver once, many years ago, it doesn’t work properly with modern versions of CUPS, and they can’t be arsed to revise it.
But most printers these days will do basic one-sided 100%-size prints out of the box, and that’s all many people need.
I had a Samsung colour laser printer, they provided driver for linux, I installed them, everything works, full support for settings etc
Drivers.
my experience is that through network, it’s just flawless. I turned on my printer and sure there it was. (though this feature just became a huge issue recently :P)
