29
votes
Can anyone recommend a printer/scanner combo that works with Linux with no additional drivers?
I'm looking for a black & white laser printer with a scanner for home office use. The only fancy thing about it is that I'm running Linux and I don't want to install any driver packages from the manufacturer. I want to plug it into any laptop running any Linux distro and start printing and scanning with no fuss.
Brother printers are very popular, but if I search for any Brother printer and "linux", all I can find is stuff about the drivers and how to fix the various issues that come with those.
If I understand correctly, modern printers should just work via something called IPP/AirPrint and they should also work over USB. Is that correct?
What about the scanner? Does that also just work over IPP?
Basically any printer should work completely out of the box with Linux. The printer situation is much better on Linux than it is on Windows. I don't really know what Linux you run, but if you use a "pre-made" distro (eg. Fedora or Ubuntu) and a desktop environment like GNOME or KDE then the entire printing stack should already be configured for you.
This is true. I remember connecting some HP inkjet back in around 2010 to my Linux machine (I bekieve OpenSUSE at the time) and it worked out of the box, while you had to install a lot of junk on Windows to get it running (and sometimes got stuck in print queue anyway...)
HP is special though because they provide open source drivers that are packaged on most distros. As shitty as their devices are, their Linux support has always been great.
Pretty much every manufacturer does this these days. Especially since Apple bought CUPS - they just support MacOS and Linux support is basically free.
I'm less worried about the printer and more about the scanner. My parents have a printer/scanner device from Epson where the printer works great but the scanner doesn't work at all.
I have two Epson EcoTanks and both scanners work on my Linux install (Debian).
You do have to install a couple of packages, but they're already in the repos.
Really? My parents have an Epson EcoTank and the scanner doesn't work with Debian at all. It isn't even detected.
Which packages did you install? I couldn't find any Epson-related packages.
I'll look when I'm at my PC tomorrow (if I remember) but this should be all you need: https://support.epson.net/linux/en/epsonscan2.php
Downloading drivers from a website is exactly what I don't want. I'm limited to the supported distros and any update of my distro's packages can break the foreign packages. If the manufacturer decides that they must sell more printers, they can stop supporting my 3 year old model and I end up with a large paperweight. This also increases the attack surface if the website gets hacked.
Unless it's a network printer and you've picked OpenSuse as your distro. It's been 2 years now and I still don't have it working. Same printer was fine in Ubuntu. I think I had something to do with the OpenSuse firewall.
I have Brother DCP-1610WE at home. I haven't ever connected it to my PC via USB. It got conncted on wifi through WPS (could be done through PC via USB too I suppose) and I have used it wirelessly since then.
I got it running on my desktop through CUPS (Linux printing server) - I may have to had to add the printer file (to identify printer) and/or manually specify IP address, but I don't really remember that. It was kinda painless process. If you go USB, I believe it would be even easier.
I got scanner working too. It scans through xsane (Linux program) but to be able to do so wirelessly, I thibk I had to install something. I run Gentoo, so .deb or .rpm packages are not for me, exactly. This one was definitely more advanced to get running. Again though - if you run USB I believe it would be much easier.
And the last one, the biggest accomplishment for me - I got scanner running from printer to my headless server! You out paper in scanner, you hit scan button on theprinter, select DPI and it scans and saves the scan to the specified folder on the server!
There will certainly be better suited people to answer you. I just wanted to say that it is possible to runy this specific printer with Linux without troubles (although not newbie friendly). The printing side of things should work without any problems or need for some advanced things, the scanner may need some software from Brother - this would probably be just some plugin or command line program to "discover" the scanner for programslike xsane, not full fledged graphical suite needing hundreds of MB...
I have a Brother DCP-L2530DW, and the only requirement needed to connect it wirelessly with a computer is to enable mdns so the computer can receive the advertisement packets from the printer. Then the communication happens over IPP both for printing and scanning, even if drivers might be available and you may use them.
For printing I use CUPS, and for scanning I use Skanlite
I have to look into that, thanks!
It's alluded to in the OP, but CUPS is also the stack for MacOS, right? i.e. if a printer works for Mac devices, there is a fairly decent chance it works for Linux? Very little knowledge in this area, though.
Brother DCP- ... Ubuntu automatically sees it over Wi-Fi, even when I am testing out noble
I have a Brother L2750DW (black and white laser and double-sided scanning) Printing works out-of-the-box after connecting the printer to my wifi and for scanning I wanted something that didn't depend on my computer being on. I scan to FTP and have a small USB Stick connected to my router where the files are saved. I then have a script on my computer that runs every minute to check if there are any new files.
Scanning to a USB stick sounds like an acceptable fallback solution if the scanner doesn't work. Thanks!
My Brother Hl2280dw and 9340cdw worked without issues. And I trust any other color or bw laser from them to do the same. They're the most reliable brand I've used.