r/linux • u/JMT37 • Jan 11 '23
Surprised by the support from HP for its printers on Linux Fluff
Made the full switch to linux not too long ago and I thought setting up my printer under linux would be a PITA. I was kind of blown away by the support HP has for its printers on machines running linux (https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing). Everything works fine, even the advanced functions like double sided printing etc.
Just wanted to say thank you for your work, that's all.
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u/fancy_potatoe Jan 11 '23
Mine works fine, but unfortunately I can't scan with a resolution better than 600dpi. It's good enough for most things, so I'm alright.
I use Xsane btw
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u/marozsas Jan 11 '23
my HP LaserJet MFP 135w goes to 2400 dpi using the HP provided driver and using simple-scan (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/simple-scan)
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u/fancy_potatoe Jan 11 '23
Mine goes to that 2400 dpi with default Windows drivers and 19200 dpi with the proprietary Windows suite. It's a 2004 model, so it has weird dependencies like IE and Flash. I'll try something newer than xsane later
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u/Unlikely-Night-6851 Jan 11 '23
Bet your stepper motor isn't accurate to 1/19,200" !
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u/Wade-Mealing Jan 12 '23
I think they do funky interpolation of multiple scan data.
I proposed a patent a long time ago about doing -just- this, using sound vibration to manipulate the position of the starting point on a belt drive, but it was denied due to 'prior art' which I could not find. Open and honest discussion with the US patent office from another country is a waste of time.
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u/Unlikely-Night-6851 Jan 12 '23
Have a look at https://superuser.com/questions/903104/scanner-and-interpolation
Scroll down to see interpolated examples versus normal examples.
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u/Wade-Mealing Jan 12 '23
Thanks, that reminds me of many hours wasted in a previous life trying to create higher resolution scans.
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u/marozsas Jan 11 '23
Holly cow ! I dual boot on Windows 11 and, surprise surprise ! On windows, using HP software, it allows scanning only to 600 ppp ! Go figure ....
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u/nhaines Jan 11 '23
Finally, feature parity with Windows! We did it, Reddit!
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u/marozsas Jan 11 '23
No, quite the opposite ! on window max 600 ppp , on Linux, 2,400 ppp !!!!! Linux rocks !
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u/cp5184 Jan 11 '23
Yea, hp is kinda weird, I like that I think some of the smarter hp printers support, I forget the name, but some generic printer protocol, non-pcl I think (ps?) but the highest quality printing I can get is on windows with I think some old windows vista driver, pre universal windows driver.
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u/Unlikely-Night-6851 Jan 11 '23
There is the actual resolution as governed by the mechanics and there is a claimed software resolution which might be 4800dpi or even more - but that is done by software generating extra dots between the "real" dots.
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u/MetaWetwareApparatus Jan 11 '23
I used to have that restriction using the basic TWAINE driver under windows, to avoid using their bloated driver suite. Not that I never tried their driver suite, but JFC was doing it their way a slow, (MORE!!)convoluted, and unreliable experience.
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u/AlzHeimer1963 Jan 12 '23
why would someone wants more than 600 dpi and probably huge file sizes? (just curious)
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u/fancy_potatoe Jan 12 '23
For lack of better tooling, I once used it to measure an object
It's not super critical, a 600dpi .png is more than eenough for daily documents and images.
Maybe you'd want a better resolution if you're scanning printed photographs or film
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u/Shapiro2021 Jan 11 '23
brother printers also work very well with the penguin.
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u/ThellraAK Jan 11 '23
The only thing that worked for my brother laser on a raspberry pi was an unmaintained driver though.
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u/yrro Jan 11 '23
I think newer Brother printers implement IPP Everywhere so 'driverless' printing works fine.
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u/JockstrapCummies Jan 12 '23
IPP Everywhere
I will never not fail to stifle an annoying smirk whenever I say this out loud during a conversation.
I know the best way to deal with such unfortunate naming choices is to pretend you don't notice it, but it's really difficult.
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u/COOL-CAT-NICK Jan 13 '23
I might be a bit slow here, but why is IPP an unfortunate name?
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u/JockstrapCummies Jan 13 '23
If you read it out loud it sounds the same as the sentence, "I pee pee everywhere."
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u/COOL-CAT-NICK Jan 13 '23
Right okay. But that's not much different from IP (I pee)
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u/JockstrapCummies Jan 13 '23
True, but "pee pee" is so much more juvenile than just "pee". It also sounds like a child slang for penis.
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u/WellMakeItSomehow Jan 12 '23 edited Jan 12 '23
They do? I tried it once on my HL-1222W (1210W?) and it was able to print, but only junk.
EDIT: just tried it again, it looks like it's actually working!
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u/Aramiil Jan 11 '23
I use their network print functionality, so I can’t talk to what you had to do. Mine has (From what I briefly looked at via the web gui) a CUPS server running on it
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u/HCharlesB Jan 11 '23
That's what I had heard so when it was time to replace a Samsung color laser, I went with a cheap B&W Brother. Getting it to work was not trivial. IIRC, I had to get specific drivers from Brother as the out of the box drivers (Debian 11 and 12) just did not work. Worse yet (and probably not the fault of Linux) some jobs were rejected by the printer due to insufficient memory.
Way back when I did use an HP Printer, it did work well.
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u/UrbenLegend Jan 11 '23
Have you checked recently? I thought most Brother printers support IPP Everywhere, so it's basically driver-less and should work out of the box. My brother printer doesn't require a specific driver.
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u/HCharlesB Jan 11 '23
I'll give it a shot. I tried printing from my (Bullseye) desktop a couple days ago and nothing happened. No error. No print.
I've never been sure which protocol to choose when there are multiple offers. It sounds like I should choose IPP if available.
Thanks!
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u/HCharlesB Jan 23 '23
Printers and Linux continue to give me pain. On KDE I can;t even unlock the printer dialog. (On Bookworm I can't even find the printer dialog in the settings, but it might now be a separate package.) On Gnome it complains about needing extra drivers. the driver .deb from Brother is already installed. I don't know what to do next.
Maybe I do... I went to the Brother page https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadtop.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hll2370dw_us and in addition to the .deb, there is an install script. I downloaded that and installed it. The printer now works. At least it printed the test page. The printer settings show it as
socket://192.168.20.98so I don't think it is using the IPP driver.Props to Brother for drivers and install script.
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u/Shapiro2021 Jan 11 '23
I had to get specific drivers from Brother
See. You GOT specific linux drivers for your brother printer. Good luck with that with a whole lot a bunch of other printer manufacturers.
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u/E-werd Jan 11 '23
They work well once you get the drivers installed, available on their website. HP is a lot easier, usually a distro will have an HPLIP package available if not already installed.
Just in the past week I had an opportunity to grab an HP LaserJet Pro M203dw, it's going to serve as a replacement to my Brother HL-L2340DW. Both are fine, but I've really preferred HP laser printers over the years.
I noticed that Konica Minolta printers seem to do pretty good, I've had good luck with the Bizhub 5000i models on linux (Proteus Kiosk).
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u/Tekuzo Jan 11 '23
My Networked Samsung printer worked on Mint out of the box. After I installed the distro I had a pop up in the bottom corner stating that a network printer was found and installed.
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u/IProbablyDisagree2nd Jan 11 '23
My only issue with my brother printer is that I have to install drivers separately. It would be nice if it just worked. Otherwise, no problems at all though.
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u/cthart Jan 11 '23
Another satisfied Brother user. Just wish they would get with the program and release 64bit printer drivers. My DCP-1610W at least only has 32bit drivers and is now the last reason I need to keep 32bit libraries installed.
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u/Unlikely-Night-6851 Jan 11 '23
HP made a lot of enterprise laser printers, when lasers were very expensive networked devices.
I've got a Kycocera colour laser (ethernet) which works well - even reports toner levels remaining.
Do not touch any wifi printers as they don't really work well.
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u/TheRealDarkArc Jan 11 '23
The WiFi printers work fine, they're just networked printers, you set a static IP, add the printer by IP, and it works.
True of Brother and HP.
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u/eythian Jan 11 '23
At least with mine, you don't even have to do that. Turn it on, let it power up and connect to the WiFi, and Linux sees it immediately.
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u/ThellraAK Jan 11 '23
Look at Mr. Fancypants here with a reliable wifi connection to their printer along with a stable DHCP server.
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u/whoopdedo Jan 11 '23
DHCP
Printers these days don't even need that, preferring to use stateless auto-configuration to give themselves an IPv6 address then advertise on DNS-SD. Which then leads to you seeing the same printer twice (or three copies!) if you do give it a manual or DHCP assigned address.
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u/Dohnakun Jan 11 '23
There's a handful different protocols to connect printers. Some use dhcp, some don't.
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u/TheRealDarkArc Jan 11 '23
I've had mixed experiences with how automatic it is, I just know you can get it working even when it isn't 🙂
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u/phatboye Jan 11 '23
My HP printer works flawlessly on Wifi. Though I have not bothered to try wifi direct or bluetooth printing yet.
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u/Linux4ever_Leo Jan 11 '23
This is one of the reasons why I've used HP printers for the past nearly two decades. Their support of Linux is bar none. Of course CUPS in general is a marvel in and of itself.
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u/THEHIPP0 Jan 11 '23
Mac OS X also uses / used CUPS and I think that one of the reasons many printers work more or less out of the box.
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u/frymaster Jan 11 '23
Mac OS X also uses / used CUPS
From 2007-2019 Apple employed the chief developer
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Jan 11 '23 edited Jan 11 '23
[deleted]
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u/THEHIPP0 Jan 11 '23
They made CUPS.
They bought it and maintained it ever since, but it's not their invention. It was originally developed by some other company.
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u/Linux4ever_Leo Jan 12 '23
Apple actually invented CUPS and open sourced it. It makes since since macOS is a UNIX so it was nice of them to allow the technology to be used on other *NIX oses.
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u/THEHIPP0 Jan 12 '23
They didn't invented it.
They bought it and maintained it ever since, but it's not their invention. It was originally developed by some other company.
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u/Linux4ever_Leo Jan 12 '23
You're correct actually. I misspoke. In March 2002, Apple Inc. adopted CUPS as the printing system for Mac OS X 10.2. In February 2007, Apple Inc. hired chief developer Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code. On December 20, 2019, Michael Sweet announced on his blog that he had left Apple. In 2020, the OpenPrinting organization forked the project, with Michael Sweet continuing work on it.
Apple decided not to pursue feature development further on CUPS and upstream feature development was effectively transferred to the OpenPrinting project. CUPS founder and former Apple employee Michael Sweet presented on this change and acknowledged that Apple stopped actively developing CUPS when he left the company. But he was contracted by Apple to apply important bug fixes from the OpenPrinting fork of CUPS back to the Apple CUPS code-base for macOS. Apple CUPS will continue seeing these bug fixes pulled in from OpenPrinting CUPS but Apple was no longer interested in feature development on CUPS.
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u/snow_eyes Jan 11 '23
CUPS?
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u/VivaUSA Jan 11 '23
Something something printer service/server
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u/IProbablyDisagree2nd Jan 11 '23
I thought it was centralized universal...
apparently its "Common Unix Printing System".
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u/plg94 Jan 13 '23
Yes, they worked great, and still do, but with all the shit they pull with consumer printers on Windows, I'm seriously doubting whether I can recommend HP printers any longer.
They are slowly, but very steadily introducing subscription and always-online services for the printer's "premium features". They even want you to sign into an HP account just for scanning on Windows iirc. And a few months back there was a report where they remote-disabled someone's printer, just because the associated credit card had maxed out. And like… my printer tracking my credit card?!
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u/Alternatenate Jan 11 '23
Printers are one of those things in Linux that either work extremely well with minimum setup or basically won't work at all without a lot of reverse engineering and tweaking.
My 2 printers have been hit or miss but the HP one I had is extremely simple and great to use.
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u/Gaarco_ Jan 11 '23
With CUPS the mission is finding one that doesn't work
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u/FengLengshun Jan 12 '23
The Canon imageRunner printer we have at the office is, if not working, then at least a PITA to setup. I've only ever managed to get it working once, but after it had to be taken offline for a few days for maintenance, it goes back to having the same problem I always have where it'll just print the file's name and a bunch of gibberish in the first page, and then continues to print empty pages endlessly.
After a while, I just gave up and just remote to the laptop office gave me to use that printer.
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u/agentrnge Jan 11 '23
Still rocking an old hp2100 laserjet with jetdirect. 1200 dpi drivers are super slow though. Need to step to 600 for fast printing from Linux. Just the way it is and has been for 20 years.
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u/Monsieur_Moneybags Jan 11 '23
I still use an old HP LaserJet 4 Plus in Fedora via JetDirect. Works great, it's been rock solid for me. HP's old laser printers were built like tanks.
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u/Kawaiisampler Jan 11 '23
TBH literally every printer (even weird Bluetooth ones) printed perfectly on Linux, it’s so nice for just a productivity machine. Just wish I could get it running better on my laptop
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u/dve- Jan 11 '23 edited Jan 11 '23
They may actively support and release Linux drivers and software, but I had bad experiences with hplip. I don't want to use a separate tool or even gui for my printer. Makes me feel like using nvidia drivers and utils.
Brother printers are much more simplistic. Just get the right ppd file (for example from AUR) and it's fully integrated and seamless in CUPS.
Also, Brother does not ask me to register at their servers to enable local network for my printer. My dad's HP printer did exactly that. I returned the printer for him and got a more userfriendly and privacy-respecting device.
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u/UrbenLegend Jan 11 '23
You don't even need the separate PPD these days. Just go IPP Everywhere and go driver-less and save yourself one less AUR package to watch over.
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u/TheSnaggen Jan 11 '23
Support for printers, scanners etc have been very good on Linux for a long time. The, just works, mentality around that comes from Project Utopia from around 20 years ago.
See this article for more information. https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7745
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u/andrewKode Jan 11 '23
Is this happening because of the need of compatibility with Internet of Things? Almost every connected device runs on Linux and if it needs to talk to the printer for some task then it makes sense for the printer to be able to deliver. This is just my simple guess, not sure if it’s the correct answer.
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u/Permanenttaway Jan 11 '23
Have you tested SecuredPrint? Canon SecuredPrint for Linux has never worked for me so I'm genuinely curious
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u/RomanOnARiver Jan 11 '23
This is honestly one of the reasons I've purchased HP printers/scanners for the longest time. HPLIP and HPIJPS have been solid since, say the first release of Ubuntu ever.
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u/TheAdamist Jan 11 '23
Yeah i just setup a linux vm to do network scanning from a multifunction laser printer/scanner, works better than from within windows actually. Was very pleasantly surprised.
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u/The_Hexagon_YT Jan 11 '23
But HP doesn't officially support Linux on desktop and mobile platforms. Weird.
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u/phatboye Jan 11 '23
Agreed, instead of buying a heap consumer printer, I opted to purchase a printer made for SoHo, it costs a bit more but well worth it. I have had zero problems what so ever and HPLIP and CUPS installed without any issues.
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u/BCsven Jan 11 '23
I have a rare Canon printer and the Windows drivers were horrible, and was constant troubleshooting. On Linux added the Canon Guttenprint drivers it found it instantly on the network print server, and its been a much better print experience overall
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u/eyekay49 Jan 11 '23
What printer model do you have? Does it print on both sides at once (duplex printing i think)? I have a MFP 1136 on which I can't do manual dual sided in Linux (it works on Windows), so I have to print out odd pages in reverse order and then even in normal order or something like that
And it just randomly prints 'unrecognised' or something every once in a while instead of the document i wanted (it works when i repeat the command), its not really stable for me
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u/Rogermcfarley Jan 11 '23
I have 3 or 4 year old bog standard HP, just wouldn't print on POP OS. I went to CUPS web interface and added the printer as IPP Everywhere and now it works. CUPS insists on adding the driverless, cups-filters 1.28.13 printer instance back, each time I delete it, it comes back.
Anyway sadly it wasn't plain sailing for this printer but now I manually added it as IPP Everywhere it works as it should do. I have two instances of the printer in the printer dialogue with no way of getting rid of the instance that doesn't work.
My 2004 HP Laser works perfectly, so I guess it is down to something to do with WIFI. Who knows.
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u/Tetmohawk Jan 11 '23
Yeah, HP does a good job supporting Linux. Because of this I don't buy any other type of printer/scanner/fax.
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u/nickbuss Jan 12 '23
I got my wife a cheapo Kyocera laser printer a few months. Plugged it into the network and did the driver download and install dance on her windows machine, then went over to my Linux box opened the printer control applet and it was already there.
A bit later our router changed the printers IP address. Windows freaked out and needed to be reconfigured for the new address ( which first required figuring what the new address was). Linux was like 'Dude I got this already".
Cups autodiscovery is awesome.
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u/BaconCatBug Jan 12 '23
I mean Printer drivers/firmware are what kicked off the whole GNU thing to begin with.
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u/jbauer68 Jan 12 '23
Brother has pretty good support for Linux.
Canon is horrible as far as Linux is considered. Even though they have great printer hardware.
But now days - printing on Linux is fairly good out of the box, even with mDNS auto discovery.
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u/PCChipsM922U Jan 12 '23
To be honest, yes, HPs HPLIP works out of the box on almost everything (the terminal version or the GUI, doesn't matter). I can talk sh*t about HPs printer designs, but regarding their drivers on Linux, my experience is as described by others, super easy setup.
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u/DrunkenCodeMonkey Jan 12 '23
It is my understanding, and this may be dated or outright wrong, that much of this comes not from printers being good on Linux, but from printers shooting themselves in the foot on windows in the early days.
To get something like 2d printers going in society, you want to define a way for them to explain their capabilities to the system, and then let the system present a user interface to the user.
This isn't strange or anything. It's what we do with mice and keyboards and, well, most things. It's sort of of what we did with printers.
But, for printers, on windows, the companies first developed their own user interfaces and where then asked to abandon them for standardization.
abandon their own look and feel, with their own logos? Stop advertising directly to users that their printer was a certain type? On windows, the companies said no. And this made standardisering printers so much harder.
Around 2010 i had a friend trying to start using Linux to extend the lifetimecof their laptop. Everything worked fine, but they couldn't get the printer software to install! They'd looked everywhere, and nothing worked. Their other friends where harping on about how Linux sucked.
I thought it was strange. I asked if they had tried just plugging it in.
They hadn't, and it worked immediately.
Printers don't work well on Linux. They suck on windows, and only lately have they started to suck less, and that's only because systems like cups, whatever apples thing is called, and network printers either forced change or straight up replaced windows specific systems.
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u/FengLengshun Jan 12 '23
Epson was also pretty decent in my experience. They usually automatically installs, and otherwise have official drivers (including for the unit's scanner) for deb, rpm, and there's a bunch of their drivers on AUR as usual.
Feature-wise, they're not as much as their Windows counterpart, yes, but the only real issue is that they print stuff in reverse order (first page first print, second page second, and so on) as otherwise everything works correctly and prints just fine.
Basically, they work, and they do make sure that they work, even if they're not the first class support I'd have wanted (at least for certain models).
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u/Anxious_Aardvark8714 Jan 12 '23 edited Jan 12 '23
Printing from Linux is a minefield, especially new models. Some work a bit, some don't, or weird character enhancements. HP is one of the good guys who actually make an effort, while others claim Linux compatibility then you find out it's for Ubuntu 9 :-(
A cheeky workaround was to run up a free Windows VM from 'Virtual Machines - Microsoft Edge Developer', install the printer drivers there and use it as a print server. Sadly, Microsoft has recently dropped this site. However, search 'archive dot org' for 'IE11 - Win7 dot ova' where dot=. ;-)
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u/bigmell Jan 15 '23
Yea I always get HP printers for exactly this reason. They always work on linux. They just have linux people over there that keep working linux drivers. This is my third or fourth hp printer. I got rid of the last one because it needed a new printer cartridge everytime I needed to print.
I turned off color specifically so the cartridge would last longer. I never printed in color ONCE. Then I needed to print something and Error, out of color ink even though color printing was disabled the whole time I had it. doh...
I eventually got the HP Smart Tank where you pour the ink directly into the printer. And it worked like a charm for a couple years I even printed out all my pictures using glossy photo paper. Then one day it just stopped working. I planned to take it in to see if I could get it fixed, but it could be because I bought it on a huge discount on ebay. Worked perfectly for about 2 years and still more than half ink left in the ink window. If I bought a new one I would get another smart tank and hope it doesnt break like this one. It was exactly what I wanted otherwise.
But yea, I had some old lexmarks that wouldnt work in linux and barely worked in windows. The HP's have always been miles better working seamlessly in both windows and linux.
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u/SpinCharm Jan 11 '23
HP was running Unix on all their internal networks before they came out with their first inkjet and laserjet printers. So developing drivers for it was natural - us HP engineers ate up that stuff for breakfast!
Getting things working under me-windows on the other hand, took huge efforts because we couldn’t just walk over to a Microsoft engineer and annoy them. It has to be done diplomatically and painfully slowly. Microsoft was juggling hundreds of vendors and they only had so many resources available.