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.
cartridgesBottles are simpler.
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.
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.
At least it only needs to be precise if the register is adjustable. You would need some tiny stepper motors right? I’m not familiar with how register is adjusted on desktop printers, but I know it can be.
I too own an HP
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
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 🤷.
Seriously, one of the best ways to fix printer issues with windows. Is to buy a cheap raspberry pi zero or similar. And stick it in between as a print server. It solves so many random issues for both bad printer, firmwears and fucky windows behaviors
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.
Printers fucking suck.
Back in the day you’d just
cat file.txt > /dev/lp0and it would work. Mostly.
A Linux meme that’s somewhat critical of Linux?
I wonder what the comments will be like…
It’s not really critical of Linux, it’s criticising those stupid fucking printers in general
Linux has printer problems? Printing works fine for me…
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.
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.
Brothers linux script still working great for me and my aging printers
+1 to brother printers
Brother printers were the last straw in throwing away they last inkjet I ever hope to own.
Want to scan something into your computer, you say? Sorry, can’t do that because you’re low on magenta!
No idea if their laser printers try the same crap, because I avoided that brand when it came to picking one out, but holy crap what an off-putting experience.
The printers are probably running Linux too.
Nope, *BSD… most of them.
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).
conversion kit available
I would like to hear more about those conversion kits and what are they reused for.
Look up your printer model number on Alibaba. Or better yet, on Taobao (but if you don’t speak Chinese it’s a bit complicated). Your options depending on the printer you have are going to be :
- Print heads conversion kits (a replacement of the complete print heads module with tubes feed from ink bottles attached outside your printer)
- Refillable ink cartridges
CounterfeitedCompatible ink cartridges that cost a fraction of the official ones while having 10 times more ink in them.
Now depending on where you live and the local laws it may or may not be legal to import those. In the country I live in there is no law against it. In most South East Asia the law doesn’t care about that and if it does, law enforcement doesn’t. :)
My printer has to go through like 5 power cycles for it to even detect its ink cartridges. I guess thats what i get for taking the ewaste printer from the office
Atleast it was free? I did the same thing, took office salvage. I’ll be replacing it soon with a laser printer.
a free printer is always awesome, but youll mostly spend money on ink anyway
A free printer might be awesome if it’s laser…a free ink jet printer is like saying you got stabbed ‘for free’. I mean, yeah, it was free.
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
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)
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.
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.
