Linux Printing: A Curious Mix of Yuck and Excellence, part 2

In the upgrade from Debian Squeeze to Wheezy, I had to reinstall my printers -- they were still there; they just didn't work. Since the upgrade, I've had to reinstall a couple again, but they now all work. It's all HP, by the way -- at home and work.

With SalisOS, ROSA Linux, Pardus and even my development project the printing has all "just worked" for at least three years now. No reinstalls, no weird driver issues, no problems at all. That wasn't true five years ago.

In my case, the upgrade process scuttled printing. Fresh installs should be no problem, as I was able to get printing back by reinstalling each printer.

thanks Carla, sharing with G+ and FacePlant now.

Now this old thread has been revived, how about Dell's printers?

Just yesterday, my niece bought a Dell A920 (something) from a estate sale. She uses Kubuntu 12.04 and the scanner was not a problem at all. XSane recognized and worked perfectly. Printing was a different story. It was recognized but as a generic text-only printer, which didn't work. I will researching it today.

Any Ideas or experiences are appreciated.

Yep, Dell printers are just rebranded Lexmarks. See Carla's linked solution above.

Quoting:See Carla's linked solution above.

That would be helpful, but is not mine to apply this solution. It is owned by fourteen years old who keeps teasing me by repeating "I hate Linux" because it doesn't have iTune and knows she has no chance of getting an Apple or run Windows on her computer.

She does have an Epson printer already but this one was purchased as a scanner and thought would be a backup printer.

Quoting:Replaced/Update old reference with better one

Ref URL

Another URL

Installation on Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS

Not sure if this works with latest Ubuntu 12.04 but I will give it a try when I get a chance.

> Just yesterday, my niece bought a Dell A920 (something) from a estate sale.

http://www.sane-project.org/man/sane-lexmark.5.html and http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man5/sane-lexmark.... indicate that it should now be supported as a Lexmark 1100/1200 device. You'll probably need to install sane and xsane to get it working, if they're not already installed.

I commented on it, because LXer put it on the home page. Why LXer resurrected it, I have no idea.

HPLIP works great on a real printer, but the P1005 is not a real printer as I noted in the OP.

I've had terrible luck with Brother printers. They seem designed to expire. I had an inkjet Brother that said that brand new ink was expired. Then it used a yellow cartridge for exactly three days before declaring it expired. I will never buy another Brother.

@JD,

Thanks for the links, I will check them out.

I already have xsane installed and device working as a scanner, what I am trying to do is getting working as a printer.

> I already have xsane installed and device working as a scanner,

Ah, I misunderstood. I thought you had it working as a printer, but not as a scanner.

Well, all the links agree that it's apparently a relabeled Lexmark 1100/1200, and should use the Z600 drivers.

See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1698157 for the details of getting it working in 10.04. Hopefully they're still applicable.

But I have to agree with others here that as a general rule Lexmark simply doesn't support Linux.

Quoting:I've had terrible luck with Brother printers. They seem designed to expire. I had an inkjet Brother that said that brand new ink was expired. Then it used a yellow cartridge for exactly three days before declaring it expired. I will never buy another Brother.

These probably have an expiration date coded into the cartridge. Some HP printers have that "feature." You can unseal a cartridge that has never been opened, but is past the expiration date (which is also printed on the outside of the box) and the printer just won't use it. I have gotten around this problem with an HP before by disabling two way communication; if the printer can't ask your computer what the date and time are, it doesn't know the cartridges have expired. That's not a great solution because two way communication can be useful, but it worked to get some use out of the cartridge.

What chapped my a$$ about those Brother printers is that I could not do anything until I changed the yellow. Removed the ink, smashed the printer and recycled it with the next load going out. HP did this for a short time but got shouted down in the marketplace. Some people learn, others not so much.

Sorry to hear negative reports on Brother printers.

My experience with Brother on Linux has been outstanding. I'm using a Brother MFC-J825DW with a wifi connection from three Linux computers and I couldn't be more pleased. The Linux drivers supplied by Brother played well in both Fedora and Ubuntu, and the replacement ink cartridges at 70 cents each (from Amazon) has delighted my pocketbook. I don't know of any other printer with such inexpensive ink replacements.

I've had none of the problems others have described, and I've been strongly recommending Brother printers to all my Linux friends.

I had no problems with the drivers...it was the yellow ink being empty that held my work hostage until I bought and inserted another yellow cart. Couldn't even scan or copy b&w. Locked the whole device down until I replaced the cart. No workie for me.

That's why I don't use inkjets -- it's laser or nothing for me.

> That's why I don't use inkjets -- it's laser or nothing for me.

That's pretty much the case for me too.

Quoting:I had no problems with the drivers...it was the yellow ink being empty that held my work hostage until I bought and inserted another yellow cart. Couldn't even scan or copy b&w. Locked the whole device down until I replaced the cart. No workie for me.

Quoting:That's why I don't use inkjets -- it's laser or nothing for me.

Most all-in-one inkjet printers don't work that way. My Epson Stylus NX305 will happily scan with ink out. The cartridges are also the least expensive I've had in a printer in, well... maybe 15 years or more. It does a really nice job on color and photo printing and it was incredibly inexpensive. I'm completely happy with it.

My Brother laser printer is still on its first toner cart, 7 years later. And yes, it does get used every once in a while.

It works just fine with CUPS, although I did need to download a PPD for it.