Printing on Linux

It is way easier than anything else.

my printer spits out page upon page of random characters and mess when I try to print from my desktop, gave up and use my phone now

An u until live CD will find my decade old HP laser and print to it without any work.

Getting my NIXOS to print at the same printer? About an hour.

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.

Because printing in Linux both works and is supported and not supported and hope that there are drivers and they work.

For example, I have a brother printer and in both arch and Ubuntu/mint the printer worked out of the box. But I was missing features like double sided printing. So I had to download drivers for it.

In arch the drivers were on the AUR, so I was printing is seconds.

In Ubuntu/mint they weren’t in my package manager, so I had to go to brother’s website and hope they had drivers. Brother did and while it took a bit it did work too. No worse than windows.

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.

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.

Anecdotally Windows is the only platform I've used where printing (and scanning) didn't tend to "just work". The only issue I've had printing under Linux was with a second hand printer my dad got that we couldn't get to print from any computer. (shrug)

Printing on Linux has been seamless for me so far, unlike windows and macos

I've never bien able to get printing to work on arch, void or nixos.

For some reason though debian, fedora, open s'use ans their derivatives have been easier than on windows

I noticed this too. In theprimeagens recent video on cups problem they kept making jokes about printing on Unix. I think I must be lucky or something cause so far every printer I have setup on Linux has been easier then having to download all the bloatware to make them work on windows. But I have only done about 6 printers so far on Linux.

That's not been my experience.

Granted, printers suuuuuck. But I was legit surprised when both the printing and scanning functions in Linux were hands down better than windows.

Dunno, I own the cheapest Ink Jet HP sells and setup is much faster on Linux than via their drivers on Windows.
Gnome Scanner also wipes the floor with any scanning application from HP/MSFT

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

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).

IDK, my housemates printer required literally 0 setup to work with my linux VM and I've never had an issue. When I print from windows it's a pain in the butt sometimes.

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.

Funny thing is, I don't own a printer, so when I need documents printed I go to the local library. Their computers run Linux, and of all the times I've gone to get a print done it's been an extremely flawless experience. No fuss, no hassle, just load up the document and print it.

As long as your printer is supported, it's not difficult. The problem is that if you need advanced options, like artists need usually, the options aren't there.

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 my network printers and they just work out of the box. (I’ve only used Brother printers for the last 20 years)

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.

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.

Drivers.

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

It’s fine now, but getting CUPS installed, configured, and getting proper drivers for your printer used to be incredibly difficult, especially if you were new to Linux and didn’t know how to do any of that stuff.

You're printin experience within Linix is going to entirely depend on which printer you have. Some work out of the box immediately others take hours to get working and digging through forums looking for drivers.

I have a Postscript 3 compatible ipp network color laser printer for about 15 years now and it works without any issues with Linux, way better then it does from Windows. So I never understood way they say that printing is cumbersome with Linux.

It depends on the brand I guess. Some Canon Pixma did immediately worked with my distro, like literally zero setup required. However, it refuses duplexing. It just won't do it. Not driverless and not with gutenprint, although it lists the specific model, not when setting it as the default, not when setting it per job.

Yet it works on Android no problem.

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

It depends... 3d printing works fine :D

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

My brother needed the driver installed in debian on Qubes but has been flawless beyond that. When I was still running arch it just worked out of the box

apt purge cups-* libcups* libppd*

Thank me later.

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.

The Canon Pixma has always problematic for me with driver issues.

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?"

That's not my experience. Bought a new Brother MFC the other day. Hooked it up to the Wifi. All Linux machines in the house can automatically print and scan without any additional setup needed.

For basic document printing it's been great but for doing fancy print jobs it's tough on any os depending on the printer and support. My wife makes stickers and notebooks and got a fancy Epson printer and going windows Mac and Linux it was a pain. She finally got it down on her windows machine.

Even the documentation was terrible. It told her for duplex prints she would have to manually move the paper but once she figured it out it was all automatic. Youtube guides were even worse since they said it wasn't even possible on that model

Recently ran into an issue with Endeavour OS where the built in printer program would give errors when trying to add my network ecotank printer.

Tried using cups terminal and it worked the first time, and is still working weeks later.

So some of the GUI printer apps that distros ship with have issues apparently, but I don't know the extent of it.

My Xerox works way better than on osx.

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.