Oh God, this brought back a traumatic memory. I was hanging out after hours at our office to look after a meetup group that was using our space that night. Nothing tricky, make sure people can get in, keep the lights on, make sure nobody sets the place on fire.
I was plugging away on my personal laptop which had Linux on it. Having a great time doing something or other when one of the meetup organisers approached me with a USB stick and asked if I could help them print out some signs to help people know where to go.
My install was rock solid, fast and set up exactly the way I wanted, but in that moment none of that mattered because it was me who froze. I thought back to all the decisions that lead me to that situation, even the conversation with a coworker a few months ago about Linux who literally said “I love Linux but one day I’m just afraid I’ll have to print something or whatever and I won’t be able to”. How foolish I was to dismiss the wisdom in his words that day, and now my worst nightmare had come to pass.
I swallowed hard, looked the organiser in the eyes, and told them I couldn’t help them. I didn’t even try. Best to rip the band-aid off, disappoint them now and get it over with. After the glaring admission left my mouth I waited for the inevitable response. I was a fraud, nothing more than a self proclaimed computer geek who couldn’t accomplish a rudimentary task despite all my time studying and tinkering. It was over, I guess it wasn’t imposter syndrome after all, I really was an imposter and now I’d been discovered.
But instead the the organiser just smiled and said “that’s totally ok, we were just a bit disorganised and didn’t print it before coming this time. Thanks for your help anyway!” And everything was fine. This time.
If it makes you feel any better I’m 99% sure I’d have done the same thing.
Did you bite the bullet and go and print something the next day?
I would have tried anyway. Sometimes Linux works better with printing than Windows, some times the other way round. It just depends what the printer is and how you have your system setup.
Just say how it is. “I can try but printers are notorious for making simple things difficult.”
Yeah exactly. Chances are it would have worked provided they installed CUPS - which isn’t hard or slow on arch after all it’s not Gentoo. But if it didn’t at least you have defused expectations while showing you are still willing to try. Something like: I don’t have it setup on this laptop but I will try and get it working quickly, but no promises.
Now that brother, is storytelling.
Weirdly enough I’ve found it much easier to print on linux. It just works out of the box.
If it doesn’t it is definetly the printers manufacturer fault 😅
It’s something we can thank Apple for. CUPS is the standard printing system on practically all non-Windows OSes, and Apple hired its developer and did a lot of work on improving it in the 2000s and 2010s.
Printing and also scanning. The Gnome scanning tool is like, so much easier and more intuitive than any of the other BS software I used on Windows, and I don’t have to install proprietary spyware.
Speaking of hard Windows things being easy on Gnome. The Gnome smb and rdp sharing capabilities work simply turning them on.
In Windows it’s a whole mess trying to force it to refresh the network or wait for that diagnostic loading bar while it resets everything for it to sometimes work.
My printer can print, but most of the other features are locked behind Brothers drivers. Copying/ scanning from the document feeder and duplex were kind of a pain to get working, and for some reason only work from certain programs.
Me too. I have a Brother printer. When I first set it up, Windows printed everything in inverse black and white until I hunted down the correct driver. Windows also never figured out how to wake it up, so I always had to manually wake it up. And it simply never worked with the scanner.
Linux got everything right without me having to fuss with anything.
not on arch, you have to install cups and enable the service or socket.
That’s just how Arch works, you have to install everything yourself
Almost like the point of that OS is to know about everything that’s going on in your system because you put it all there yourself, piece by piece!
A blessing for the privacy-oriented and the people who want to learn about everything.
A curse for people who just want their computer to work.
Yep, had to do that and spend hours reading about printing services in Linux and other OSs out of curiosity. Was very useful, not that I remember any of it now.
Easier than what, exactly? Windows always works out of the box for shit like printers. If it didn’t, 99% of their user base would be calling it defective.
OSX, on the other hand, is where I’ve had so, so many issues with printers.
Nah, if you haven’t fought windows printer drivers then you’ve just been lucky. Meanwhile you can almost always convince CUPS to spit out a print.
Are you suggesting that Linux has better printer driver support than the system that 99% of that printers users use?
Yes. MacOS uses CUPS too btw.
printers are annoying
Brother printers are your best bet. And maybe try sudo.
Agreed, heard this many times. Finally pulled trigger and brought one this year.
Print from linux? Print from android? Print from Mac? Print from windows?
Yes! Mother fucking yes! All out of box and easy to install.
Printing works out of the box most of the time on Linux. However, if it doesn’t work it really doesn’t work
That’s the problem, then. They keep checking their printer for the printed pages, when they’re really coming out of the box.
That’s like all the things on Linux haha.
One day my display randomly stopped working. That was a fun week of debugging lol
printing is bad regardless of OS. Learn to draw and type very well and you will never need a printer, also curse everyone that forces you to use printers they should be shunned from society. We will have full digitalisation by bullying if necessary
Printers are something they’ve actually figured out on the last few years.
I can go somewhere I’ve never been, get the login for the network, and print documents from my phone without any downloading drivers, sacrificing goats or anything.
you don’t know how many drains that sysadmin installed under her altar, do you?
I hooked up a 2013 printer to my new wifi network, opened a pdf on my phone, clicked “print” and selected the printer from the dropdown list. No driver installation. No special app for the printer. It just works.
ooh, did they sacrifice the goats in the factory? pretty snazzy; i haven’t bought any new hardware in years, and this might just be the impetus I need to run out to microcenter.
Printers are bad under Windows because Windows supports nothing out of the box
That’s simply not true anymore. Most printers work on windows locally and through a network without any special driver installations these days.
You can buy a printer, a computer, and a wifi adapter, network them together, and start printing without installing any printer utilities or additional drivers.
They’ve come a long way in this area.
But they aren’t as good as Linux (CUPS)
Half my family just email whatever they want printing to my Dad and he prints it at his workplace.
We’ve owned multiple printers over the years but 8/10 no matter what device you used, The printer just didn’t work. The “Dad strategy” has never failed.
First day at work for junior software engineer, he is super excited and stays late getting familiar with the project.
Finally he gets up to leave and in the hallway he runs into the CEO himself, looking lost, standing with a piece of paper in his hand in front of a shredder.
“Oh, thank God,” says the CEO, “I thought everybody has left. Look, my secretary has gone and I only have two minutes until I have to be back in the conference call. Do you know how to work this thing?”
The junior looks at the shredder, notices it’s not plugged in, connects it, the thing turns on and he shows the CEO how to put in the paper and press the button. They watch the paper as it starts going in with a sigh of relief.
“Thank you so much,” says the CEO, “you’re a life-saver. I only need one copy.”
I’m on your dad’s role but for my family. It is pretty annoying specially when they can’t explain properly what they want so you have to do guesswork. Anyway it nice when people trust you so long the do not take you for granted.
Rarely used inkjet? If so, your ink dries before you can use it, I’ve had it happen after like 3 pages and then letting it sit, dry next time I try. Laser printers don’t do this, the toner will sit for a long time, and it seems to last longer in general.
If it isn’t that, but the brand is HP, the problem is that your printer should never have been born and should be thrown back into the fires from whence it came. Terrible, terrible printers.
The one kept at home until recently was some early 2000s white(yellowing) and blue thing, might have been Laser.
We had an Inkjet sometime around 2014 and went back to using the old one because it worked more of the time.
Laughs in Archlinux and Brother printer
Cries in the same
Idk how is it with brother printers, but brother scanners are an absolute PITA to make work on Arch
Over the network can be hit or miss but the usb cable and the drivers from the AUR have yet to fail me
“Can someone help me figure out how to print a file?”
“Pft, why would you want to?”
I’m new to Linux and was struggling to print from LibreOffice the other day because my printer suddenly wasn’t listed.
Hi, yeah, the printer wasn’t plugged into the computer.
see, this is why you linux cultists just cannot sway people, you’re all pushing this insane operating system that can’t even print to a printer that’s powered off in a block of concrete launched to orbit a distant star and be a russel’s teapot to drive any aliens sending probes out mad.
They are working on a pipewire plugin for that
uh huh. i bet you need to open powershull to do that though, dont you? or does linux not even HAVE powershall?
I know you’re joking, but powershell is actually available on linux lmao
satire is dead.
I just recently went through some linux printer woes. When my toner cartridge got down below 25% documents spooled from my Linux machine would fail with an out of toner error. Files from windows and the diagnostic pages from the printer itself printed just fine. Turned out I had been using a slightly incorrect print driver on my Linux machine this entire time. After a TON of digging I managed to find the correct driver and was able to print again. Only wasted most of a morning figuring it out. Lol!
Def a skill issue. But seeing as they are using arch I have no doubts that they will get over this and ultimately come out learning more about Linux and computers overall (which is probably their goal seeing as they are using arch)
I’ve never had issues printing on arch (btw)
There’s actually a surprising amount of linux printer drivers that don’t come included with CUPS but are available for download from OEM sites. Canon ships an all in one tar.gz that includes PPD files, DEB and RPM install formats, and a lazy script to install it for you along with any dependencies.
I have tried to install Canon LBP2900B drivers a thousand times. It does not work on any distribution. I have to use a windows VM.
To be fair, printers are designed from black magic and require regular blood sacrifices. And that’s with mainstream support, which arch is not.
Maintaining a printer is hell on any OS. I learned to not own a printer long ago. That’s what places that offer printing services are for. And it’s not very expensive typically
