I’ve noticed a general sentiment that printing on Linux is (or at least was) extremely cumbersome and difficult. Why is that?

  • Baaahb@feddit.nlEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    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.

  • SlippiHUD@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    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.

  • Oisteink@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 months ago

    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

  • The Doctor@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    It was terrible in the 90’s. Since CUPS became standard around 2000 it’s significantly easier.

  • mumei@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

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

    • space_of_eights@lemmy.mlNederlands
      0·
      2 months ago

      I have the exact opposite experience. It always prints and although it only prints about 6 pages per minute, it starts immediately. However, I have an old-ish HP laser printer without the crappy adware.

      My next printer will not be a HP for that reason.

    • object [Object]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      2 months ago

      From my experience I’ve had to deal with their software adware for which I’ve had to close pop ups and upsell ads before I could do anything with their printers, so that might be why it takes long to print a simple page

      • mumei@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 months ago

        My issue lies elsewhere, it takes me that long to have the printer recognized by the OS, then by CUPS browser, then I send the printing job and… it just stalls, never prints. I then cycle the USB ports and start all over again until it miraculously prints

  • Apalacrypto@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    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)

  • Unmapped@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 months ago

    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.

  • kuneho@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 month ago

    my experience is that through network, it’s just flawless. I turned on my printer and sure there it was. (though this feature just became a huge issue recently :P)

    • gigachad@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      2 months ago

      Interesting, I have no problems with a Pixma TS8350. Printing is working as shitty as it has always been on Windows. I have yet to configure the scanner to be fair.

      • Greyghoster@aussie.zone
        0·
        2 months ago

        The Canon driver needs to be installed on Fedora and has never worked out of the box without some tweaking. Canon is not really in the Linux support game.

        • gigachad@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          2 months ago

          Ii admit it didn’t work out of the box on Mint as well, but didn’t take more then 10 minutes of tweaking. But yes, I would not call it “Linux-friendly”.

  • variants@possumpat.ioEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    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

  • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    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.