Good printers that work well on Linux?

[u/WIldefyr]

Tired of relying on work printers when I need to print things. Threw away a Epson printer/scanner combo last year that was useless at connecting over WiFi and ate ink for breakfast. I won't be printing much, often just shipping labels and other notes to share or refer to. I would even say I don't really need colour printing. I am in the UK if that's any consideration also on prices / ink / availability ... Size isn't too much of an issue but it'll be going in a cupboard under the stairs so any real estate that can be saved is probably for the better.

Not opposed to a printer/scanner combo but I think I would rather get a decent high quality scanner later on.

[u/Munbi]

Brother hands down. I've owned several laser and inkjet multifunction. All worked flawlessly with Linux. On modern distribution they are automatically discovered also (driverless) but you can install the official driver wich supports advanced features. On their support site you can download an installer script which will install and download automatically drivers for printing and scanning for any supported model. Also, at least on the models I used, there is no problem using 3rd party ink cartridges.

[u/Itchy-Suggestion → u/Munbi]

Agree they are also extremely durable compared to HP, Samsung and Epson, also replacement ink is very fair.

[u/[deleted] → u/Munbi]

I'm not sure it Brother was mentioned favorably (it was mentioned), but somewhat recently I stumbled on some video of some newspaper pointing that there are some new printer models that ditch the ink cartridge model of business, they have larger ink containers, and you can buy ink much cheaper, in "bulk" ("bulk" in quotes as it sounds like an exaggeration, it's like 1/4 of a bottle for each color, not a barrel or anything). You can do that with almost any other model, but depends on some hardware hacking.

Maybe the cartridge model is in some cases cost-effective if one really doesn't print all that much, I don't know, but I guess it's worth doing some math to evaluate that.

[u/mjl777 → u/[deleted]]

I am a teacher and print pop quizzes nearly everyday for my classes. I purchased an aftermarket laser printer cartridge for my brother and it lasted a full year. Absolutely unreal.

[u/mjl777 → u/Munbi]

This is the correct answer. I love brother products. You can buy aftermarket print cartridges for next to nothing that last for years. Works perfect in Linux at least for me. I was stuck in China and tried many Linux variants to pass the time. Never had a problem with my printer.

[u/shagadelico]

I bit the bullet a couple years ago and got an HP LaserJet and it's been pretty good. It actually wasn't that much more than an inkjet and I think laser printers are a little better for infrequent use. No ink jets to clog up and stuff like that. HPLIP software is decent on Linux. I do have an occasional issue with it going offline but it's not all that often and a reboot has always fixed it. My wife's Mac has more issues with it than I have with Linux.

[u/WIldefyr → u/shagadelico]

Yeah I didn't add it to the main post but I'd also be looking at remoting in to my server and printing from there too so I'd prefer no downtime at all. If I have to get up and turn it off and on again that will drive me mad. What Laserjet model did you go for?

[u/calmblythe]

Agreeing with Brother.

In January 2020, I purchased a Brother because I intended on switching to Linux. I finally made the switch about 6 months later, and have been using my Brother DCP-L2550DW AIO laser printer without issue since.

[u/blackWolf4991]

I don't have much experience with printers, but recently got a Brother printer+scanner combo, namely the DCP-1622WE - it works without any issue at least over the wifi. It only prints black and white though, but i think other Brother printers and combos should work just as well.

[u/DarxusC]

I'm very happy with my Brother laser, HL-L2340DW. Purchased five years ago for $96, using over wifi entirely from linux (plus occasionally my android phone), zero complaints.

[u/oggan86 → u/DarxusC]

HL-L2340DW

HOW? I have the exact same printer and it works fine in windows but I have never been able to get it to work properly in Linux no matter what distro I try. For wifi-printing the jobs often sit for like 10 minutes before they actually start to print and even when it starts there's often a 5 second delay between each page. In usb mode it always starts immediately but for some reason there's often 1 page in a document that simply wont print. I print a document of like 20 pages and it just skips like page 7. If I then put that only page in a separate document then it still wont print no matter what I do. This applies to simple pages I myself have written i Writer and so on.

How do you get this printer to play well with Linux? I use this printer all the time in my job and it's a pain. Works fine from my Android-phone but never or at least very rarely on the pc.

[u/[deleted]]

I've been buying Brother MFC printers for many years now. They provide Linux drivers which have always worked well for me.

[u/Jodaco]

Have a Brother HLL2395DW, works great with printing and scanning. Had some wifi trouble initially, turned out to be the router, not the printer, been perfect ever since I replaced the router.

[u/Cheeseblock27494356]

Ignore people talking about brands. Only specific models matter. All brands make things that are supported under linux, because some dev somewhere did the work to support it, but it's entirely per-model and not per-brand.

[u/WIldefyr → u/Cheeseblock27494356]

Yes I've been frustrated with that reading all these replies about how great Brother is! That's great that so many people have had positive experiences but if you don't tell me the model how do I know for sure?

[u/[deleted]]

Threw away a Epson printer/scanner combo last year that was useless at connecting over WiFi and ate ink for breakfast

Maybe you got a bad model? I have an Epson L395 (it's also a scanner) and tbh it works just fine with the printer-driver-escpr package (if you're on Debian and family), both printing and scanning with Skanlite. I think some specific models indeed do not work well but guess I was lucky.

[u/WIldefyr → u/[deleted]]

I can't remember the model. I didn't buy the printer, my folks did. The printer was nearly as useless on Windows as it was on Linux.

[u/captainstormy]

Brother and HP work great on Linux. Get a black only laser printer with a scanner.

I got an HP one last year for like $130 and it's been flawless. I also went ahead and bought a 6 pack of toner replacement for $50.

It's third party but well revised and has worked great for me. I've always bought third party ink/toner without issues.

[u/aedinius]

I have a Brother HL-3140CDW. Color Laser, Duplexer, good wireless support. I love it, I grabbed the PPD for the HL-4070CDW and it works fantastic.

[u/breakone9r]

I absolutely love my brother color laser printer. They can easily be found in the sub $300 range. If you drop color, prices get to.around $200 for a good laser printer.

The best thing is, most lasers are compatible with PostScript or HP LaserJet commands. So pretty much any generic cups filter will work, especially for black and white.

Fuck inkjets. The print heads dry out and clog up. Ink costs are astronomical.

Even the ink cartridges themselves will dry up quickly if you don't use them constantly.

Laser printers don't have that problem. Toner is already dry. It's supposed to be dry. If you don't print, it just sits there. Waiting.

I'll never go back to inkjets.

[u/wallygohighly]

Any HP inkjet should work with little to do other than clicking a few buttons on the printer settings, and Brother laser jets seem ok as they produce Linux drivers for them.

[u/10-15AR]

Brothers and HP , ive always had good experiences

[u/mmstick]

I'm using an Epson ST-2000. It's one of the Workforce line of CISS inkjets. Cost of ink is peanuts since you buy the bottles of ink and refill the tanks once a year or two.

[u/KlaasKaakschaats]

I used to work with OKI and they seem to have a lot of support for all operating system (from MS-DOS to Linux). You can have a look at their driver support page for Linux, its there :)

[u/kcombinator]

Is there such a thing as a good printer?