I’ve noticed a general sentiment that printing on Linux is (or at least was) extremely cumbersome and difficult. Why is that?
It is way easier than anything else.
This was also my recent experience on PopOs!
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
You need to set the correct settings. It takes a few tries but in my experience it isn’t that hard
you need to set the correct settings
thanks for the insightful suggestion wowee
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.
Anything on Nix takes a long time
I kind of like that aspect of it… Is that wrong?
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 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.
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.
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.
Linux printing is very complex. Before Foomatic came along you got to experience it in all it’s glory and setting up a working printing chain was a pain. The Foomatic Wikipedia page has a diagram that will make your head spin.
No doubt, the kernel itself is also quite complex… but my comment here is on the user experience perspective, namely, for me at least “it just works”. So I’m not trying to imply it will work for anybody flawlessly nor that it’s due to the simplicity of the stack, solely that it works, for me.
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.
I also like not getting ads from printer companies
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.
SAME. Everything prints faster and worked well from day one.
SANE? :D
We raise our CUPS to your pun.
Well played!
lol
Haha, nice.
Same! I’m not at my computer at the moment so I can’t check the name of the scanning app i use but yeah, works perfectly. I use a Brother printer as well which I also can’t remember the model name of.
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/MSFTNAPS2 is good for Windows
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).
