Can anyone recommend a printer? (...ahem...) a Linux printer?
Last time I owned an inkjet was well over a decade ago. I had a nice HP color laserjet that Just Worked™for almost a decade (and PS, I bought it used), and then I just lived w/o a printer for the past 3-4 years. Now, I'm window-shopping for inkjets, it sounds like the whole "use-our-ink-or-die" business model has only gotten worse.
Are there any good inkjet printers where I can just use it like a normal printer, just buy ink (cheaper than the printer was) when I need it, yada? Or should I just write off the entire industry (again), and go straight to the laser printers?
And does anyone actually have a decent (color, all-in-one) printer that works reasonably well with their (YourDistroHere) Linux machine?
Danke
ETA: Thanks for all the feedback. I'm now prioritizing a Brother laser (maybe just mono), or possibly an Epson Ecotank.
Side-note ... how cool is it that we have so many Linux-folk in our midst!?
Thanks again.
I think for Linux people mostly recommend Brother
This is what I've heard too. I've got a Brother laser (non color) printer and it works fine (both from Linux an Windows).
That said I don't use it that much and have no special needs so I guess it might depend on you use case.
Model? I might settle for B&W, depending on what I see out there.
My issue with inkjets 15-20 years ago was actually that, that I didn't use them often enough to keep the nozzle clear and the printer would be junk because ink dried in the nozzle.
I rarely use the printer, but when I do, I need it to work.
I second the use of Brother laser printers. I've got the HL-2270W, and it works with every flavor of Linux I've thrown at it.
I'll throw in a third plug for Brother. I've got an MFCJ825DW ink jet / scanner combo that I picked up a couple years back (used) for a hundred bucks. I cleaned it, filled it with new cartridges, and it's worked brilliantly ever since. I often go 2-3 weeks without printing and I've never had it jam up or had problems with the ink drying or clogging.
The ink from the company itself costs around $50 for a pair of LC75/LC71 cartridges. I decided to try these Miroo generic cartridges as a replacement since a 15-pack is $20. They work great, no difference in the quality at all. The only caveat is that these cartridges don't re-seal themselves like the official ones do, so don't take them out until they are empty unless you enjoy dealing with an ink spill.
Works flawlessly with Linux and Windows 7-10.
Fourth plug for brother. I have a HL5200 DW (I think) and it prints fine in ask the OSes we use in the house including but not limited to:
Never had a problem; we use it with some frequency across all devices with the kids doing school at home.
Fifth plug. I set one up today through CUPS, and it was a remarkably straightforward process - after installing the appropriate driver (which my distro had packaged) and enabling and starting
cups.service, the printer just showed up in the administration tab.Seconding. I have a very similar model, HL-2270DW, and it's been great for probably a decade now. Just installed the drivers in a Pop!_OS VM and it works great there too.
It is a Brother HL-1210W series printer.
You could solve the nozzle thing with a weekly cronjob printing a test page... Or random Wikipedia article to make it a bit more interesting :)
Brother is just in general a very good recommendation.
Yes, Brother is the only printer brand I would ever bother looking at.
+1 for Brother. I have a low-end Brother Laser Printer, a HL-22, which I use with Linux, and it works fine.
I rarely do any printing, but when I do, I fire it up and it just works, unlike every inkjet I have ever owned.
Get a laser printer if you're going to actively use it yeah (esp. if you only need b&w). If not, then IMO try your best not to get a printer at all. There's plenty of copy shops all around that'll print whatever you need when you happen to need something, and even the most optimized costs around both inkjet and laser will never be worth very occasional use.
If you end up buying something, most anything will work fine on Linux. Find something well-recommended that you like and double-check by googling the model + linux and verifying there's no super obvious breakage.
I'll second the recommendation of just getting a color laser printer again. Beats having to buy ink every year because it got dried out. I have a Xerox color laser that's 7 years old now and came with Linux drivers (both a Deb and RPM, even, and it was easy to pull the PPD out for my Arch system) out of the box. Ran me the same cost as a decent inkjet and two ink replacements, so it basically paid for itself five years ago. If I was needing to replace it now, I probably wouldn't (I was still a student when I bought it, definitely print a lot less now), but it shows no signs of giving up the ghost anytime soon.
It’s been a very long time since I have seen a printer that didn’t have Linux support. Pretty much every manufacturer directly supports Linux now.
Keep in mind that quite a few years ago Apple bought CUPS to use as a printing system for MacOS. So any printer manufacturer that supports printing from any apple device basically gets Linux support “for free”.
I would agree with everyone else that you’re probably better off buying a laser printer if you are going to be using this for the occasional document, but if you really do want to get an inkjet printer I would recommend purchasing a model that uses refillable tanks instead of cartridges, such as Epson’s EcoTank line.
We can split printer users into three groups.
People who rarely use printers
People who frequently use printers
People who are either group 1 or 2, but also require very high quality prints.
For group 1: buy a laser printer. It'll sit on a shelf, and then when you need it it'll just work.
For group 2: buy a laser printer. The cost of inkjet ink is baffling, and while some of them are refillable it's hit and miss whether it's going to work or not.
For group 3: it's probably best to just outsource it to printshops, unless you have time and money available to buy printers and inks and calibration devices.
I have a (mono) Dell 1130 which I bought second hand a while ago. It's a rebadged Samsung ml 2580. It's a tank. It just keeps printing.
I love the new Epson EcoTank printers. You can easily refill the ink yourself and they print for more than a year before running out of ink, in some cases longer.
https://epson.com/ecotank-ink-tank-printers
Epson would be my second pick behind Brother, though I haven't used one in years. I have fond memories of that brand since they seemed never to need any real servicing.
Linux print drivers have come a long way in about ~10 years. Your best bet is one with network connectivity, as that usually means they'll support fairly standard protocols.
I have an older Epson XP-320. Like any inkjet, it's a finicky annoying thing. But refurb cartridges work, and printing worked out-of box on Linux. Home assistant can integrate with Brother, Epson, and Samsung printers, which is what I use to report on the ink levels. Can't speak to scanning, haven't need it since switching to Linux, but I recall that scanning was a PITA even on Windows.
I have a Samsung wireless mono laser and it Just Works. It's more hassle to set up in Windows than Linux. I can even bash my phone on it to print via NFC. It's an M2020 and when I bought mine it was £40 or something insane. The management is all done via a web interface so that's platform agnostic.
Mono lasers are the shit btw. 95% of my printing is documents and labels and I spend no more than £10 a year on toner to print hundreds of sheets. It costs a fraction of what I used to spend on ink for my inkjet. I just checked and I've done 1544 prints on my current (generic, no-brand) toner cart and it's still 40% full. Carts are maybe £15 each.
The 5% of my printing which is photos I just send to a printing service who charge me a couple of quid for a high quality print on archival-grade paper, which is much better than I ever got using even expensive inkjets.
I have a canon MG3620, And I distro hop a LOT. So far I've been able to get it running fairly easily on arch, ubuntu, fedora, and I think I could get it going on gentoo, though I haven't printed from it after getting what I needed to do so installed.
Honestly, I've had a couple of printers over the past year, and none of them have been impossible to get running. Occasionally complicated yes, but always doable.
Wow, I had no idea about Brother printers!
I've had luck with HP officejet models (that are of the multi-function kind, with 8610 being the current on e that i have) across ubuntu, Mint, and fedora distros...and works good enough. Yes, there's an occasional need for the printer to get a quick reboot, but honestly it impacts Windows devices in the house too...so less a linux distro issue and more a printer issue I'd say. I think historically HP printers have gotten decent linux support because of some HP printer utility that was created for lnux devices...then again, "printer support on linux" is not a topic that comes up when i speak with my buddies at my local linux user group...so i'm happy to learn about Brother and that it works so well with linux; TIL!
Secondly, @Eric_the_Cerise i share your sentiment that we have many linux folks in our midst!!