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.

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).

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)

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.

Is printing cumbersome and difficult on Linux? Yes, it can be. Is it better than Windows? Also yes.

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

My migration to Linux Mint coincided with getting a Brother Laser printer (DCP-L3520CDW) and I’ve had zero issues with text, photos or scanning. I just fired up the Brother and Mint said “oh, you’ve got a printer, wanna use it?”

when you buy a printer, just look that it says it’s for linux, just like you would for windows or osx. people just sometimes run into problems when they retrofit printers for other OSes to work with linux. there’s a good chance a windows printer can work with linux, but it’s not guaranteed, so do it only, if you got one for free or it originally had been bought for another PC.

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.

I’m hooked on my brother with a wifi print server now. All three major OS in our house, I just make sure the printer stays updated. Not sure how to print photos, though.

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.

My Xerox works way better than on osx.

This has been my experience also. My Brother printer/scanner works great with linux.

I had a Samsung colour laser printer, they provided driver for linux, I installed them, everything works, full support for settings etc

I have a HP printer and printing is never a smooth process. No idea why, but it takes me 5/10 minutes each time