Printer

[Guest]

I'm new to Linux, but regard myself as an advance computer user.
My question is what is the best printer to use with Linux? Right now I have a lexmark X3550 that I was given, however due to the fact that Lemarks suck and have no support for Linux I'm thinking about getting a new one for my home.

However I haven't been able to find an info on which printer companies support Linux, don't want to get a new printer and then find out that I'm out of luck.

Any thoughts would be great.

[jankushka]

Re: Printer

printers to me = hp.
but that's me.
you can start by taking a look at the ubuntu hardware support wiki page.
hth

[KeithZG]

Re: Printer

HP is definitely pretty good as noted, hell they've even deliberately written a printer control program that ships with Kubuntu these days.

Samsung is good too, probably don't put as much R&D into Linux support as HP does but as far as I know all of their printers have Linux support (they only do laser ones, at least where I live, but their laser printers are cheaper than many inkjets! And they're quite excellent even for photo-quality stuff, astonishingly). As a plus for Samsung, at least in my market area they'll actually mention on specs sheets and other advertisements that the printers work on Linux, unlike HP who keeps very low-key about it.

I've also had luck with Brother printers, and they tend to be really cheap so if you're on a budget and you see one on sale or something then it's worth quickly googling to see if it's supported, chances are good that it would be. In my experience they don't seem to be the best printers otherwise, though, but some people swear by them weirdly (and if you need a fax they often seem to be the only options that won't bankrupt you!).

Canon is the devil, at one point some of their printers had linux drivers but you had to get them from their Japan branch's FTP, and when Canon found out that people were getting those drivers from them they got rid of them and refused to make any more Linux drivers, WTF Canon you fail. I haven't tried in awhile, so people might have reverse-engineered support by now, but certainly unlike the above three the company itself doesn't support Linux.

Those are the companies I have the most hands-on personal experience with Linux and their printers, to be very specific I have the most experience with older HPs (such as the LaserJet 5L and 6L, the PSC-1315 inkjet, etc) and newer Samsungs (like the CLX-2600). In those cases it's been as easy as selecting the models from a KDE dialog and voila. On the PSC-1315 the scanning even works! (I haven't tried on the Samsung CLX-2600 since both that I've used have been as network printers and it can scan directly to a file on a plugged-in USB drive so no biggee; printing over the network definitely works though).

[Detonate]

Re: Printer

My best experience has been HP, just install hplip and you are ready to go. I also have a old Brother laser that has always performed flawlessly. Absolutely the cheapest to operate printer I have ever owned.

[mchuskie]

Re: Printer

www.linuxprinting.org is a good resource for all things Linux and printer related.

[GilGib]

Re: Printer

I have a canon ip4200 no problems

[GerardV]

Re: Printer

My Hp Photosmart 4500 works like a treat,printing and scanning, wireless, using
the hplips package . I have never managed to get my Lexmark 4550 to work with any distro, either wireless or wired so i would stay away from them

[DeathKitten]

Re: Printer

I have an old HP Deskjet 6122 that has worked lovely for me for years. My mother's boyfriend has an OfficeJet pro of last year's line, and I've been successfully able to connect with it over the network and print to it.

I sell printers at work, so I know a little bit about the consumables end of the game too. I highly recommend a two pronged approach to selecting your new printer. The thing that's going to bend you over the most is going to be the ink, and not every printer is designed alike in this respect. What are you going to mostly be printing? B&W, color, photos, text documents... etc? Photos are going to come out better on an inkjet machine, though the laser machines still do a nice job, but if you're going to be doing a lot more black and white printing, especially text, your cost per page is usually going to be a lot lower on a laser machine, while still being higher quality. That said, some of the *high end* officejet pro machines from HP can be competitive on a cost per page with a laser, while still giving you the better photo prints, but they aren't cheap machines. Watch for them on sale if you're interested in one of these.

I love my HP inkjet printers, but you gotta be careful which one you go with. If you're going to be doing much more than the occasional print, you can easily fall into the trap of picking up an ink hog and cursing the machine seven ways to Sunday. Mid to high volume users are going to want to look at the officejet line if going with HP. They have a few different levels, but most of these machines have an option to use XL cartridges, which give a much better cost per page due to the higher capacity cartridges.

Everyone else here has pretty effectively covered the linux compatibility end of things, but feel free to give me a yell if you have any questions about the actual function of the machines you're considering.

[Pillage Idiot]

Re: Printer

I bought two Brother network printers a while back for at home.
One is a 2070N laser, the other an MFC640CW inkjet multifunction.

Both are attached to my network, with all pc's set to use the laser by default (much cheaper to run).

I have found the documentation and driver support first rate on Brother's website.
They have comprehensive instructions for each model, which drivers to use, connection options (USB/Network), distribution specific instructions including any considerations for 64/32 bit. They even cover different versions of the most popular distributions.

Both my printers were very easy to set up on my Kubuntu machines, and scanning as well from the MFC.
The only proviso is that you must follow their instructions to the letter. If you do so you should have no issues.
Brother has High Capacity cartridges too for some models.
Standard cartridges can be relatively cheap when bought in multi packs.

I can tell you too that HP has printer utilities that are shipped with most new distributions.
They cover printer utilities as well for configuration and monitoring.
Theirs should be as simple as using the HPLIP tool to add a printer.

For high volume use it is hard to go past the HP printers, but the Brothers are a very good value for money home use printer.
I would not use a Brother though if your requirements are for high volume usage (ie; 1500+ pages per month).

[Tim036]

Re: Printer

My Samsung ML-2510 mono laser printer worked out of the box on Kubuntu 8.04 and my son has a later Samsung mono laser working a treat on same OS.

Samsung can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned.



Tim

[josefko]

Re: Printer

I have Samsung ML2010, it works fine with Kubuntu system driver, but there is a problem, that the driver doesn't know all what the driver in Windows from manufacturer does. For example it is not possible to have more pages on one paper. I think this is a common problem with Linux system drivers.

[growled]

Re: Printer

I always use HP and have never found one that wouldn't work with Linux.